“And the next line?”
“The little bear looked at the big bear and sho…shook his head,” I read.
Mom nodded in concentration. It looked like she was pondering some complicated math problem. At that very moment there was a light knock on the bedroom door. Dad peeked in. He was holding a book and a pack of cigarettes in his hand. His semi-long hair fell across his face in a soft wave. I always thought that Dad looked a little like a rock star with that long hair and his relaxed style. He was cool in a way that none of the other mothers or fathers were, and I used to wish he would bring me to school rather than Mom.
“I just wanted to say good night,” he said, and came into the room. He walked over to the bed, leaned over, and kissed me on the cheek. His stubble felt scratchy against my skin and the smell of cigarette smoke stung my nostrils.
“Good night,” I said, and followed him with my eyes as he walked out again. His skinny back, combined with his hairstyle, or lack of hairstyle, and the distinctive way he moved his arms as he walked made him look like a teenager.
I looked at Mom again. She was truly Dad’s opposite. Her body was large and spindle-shaped, like an animal that lives in the sea, maybe a sea lion or a whale. Her bleached hair stuck out in every direction, and her breasts threatened to burst through her flannel pajamas every time she took a deep breath.
“Now it’s your turn,” I said.
Mom hesitated for a second, then moved her index finger slowly along the text. “I hav…”
“Haven’t,” I filled in. Mom nodded, tried again.
“I haven’t slept…in your bed said the li…li…little b…b…”
“Bear,” I said. Mom clenched her hand hard.
“Drat. ‘Bear’—that’s a hard word.”
“Soon you’ll think it’s easy,” I said seriously. Mom looked at me. Her eyes suddenly looked shiny, and she squeezed my hand.
“Do you really think so?”
“Of course. Everyone in my class can read.”
That all their mothers and fathers could also read, I didn’t say to her. Even though I was only seven, I knew it would make her sad. I was the only one who knew. Not even Mom or Dad’s colleagues knew about her shameful secret.
“We can keep practicing in the morning,” Mom said, and kissed me on the cheek. “And don’t say anything to Dad about…”
“I promise.”
She turned off the light and left the room. I lay there in my bed, a warm, soft feeling spreading inside me. It was the feeling of being not only loved but also needed.
—
What if Mom were still alive; what if she’d had the chance to see me with Jesper? What would she have thought? Something tells me she wouldn’t have liked the attention our relationship is likely to attract. She would have pursed her lips, given me a disappointed, self-pitying look, and mumbled something about how I didn’t care about her anymore, but what else could she expect since I’d never helped her with anything. Then she would have started talking about that hag Löfberg’s daughter, who still lived at home, even though she was thirty, and took care of her old mother.
I glance at the clock. Nine-thirty. A vague feeling of unease is building in my chest, and before I can put words to it, I know what it is: fear. What if something has actually happened to Jesper? It’s dark, windy, and the roads are surely covered with a thick layer of freezing rain. I think about it for a few seconds, then pick up the phone on the table. Hesitate. It’s strange how hard I find it to call him. It’s as if my value is in some way dependent on him wanting me more than I want him—or at least wanting me as much. Only desperate women pester you, I think, and desperate women are hard to love.
In the end, I call anyway.
The call goes directly to voicemail, and I wonder if he’s turned off his cellphone, and why. I empty my wineglass, pull a blanket over me, and close my eyes.
—
It took a week for Jesper to call me about the loan, and to invite me to lunch as well.
We met one Saturday close to his small pied-à-terre on Södermalm. The restaurant was crowded and noisy. I almost didn’t recognize him at first. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, looking considerably younger than he had in his suit that day in the store. His whole attitude was different. The somewhat awkward, confused expression was gone. His back was straight. He smiled and looked confidently at me.
“Emma,” he said, and kissed me on the cheek.
I felt embarrassed. No one kissed me on the cheek, not even my own mother.
Especially not my own mother. “Hi,” I said.
He leaned back and gazed at me in silence, sat like that until I felt embarrassed, compelled to say something, if only to puncture the oppressive silence.
“So how did the board meeting go?”
“Good.”
He smiled. There was something greedy, almost hungry in his eyes, as if he saw something edible when he looked at me. Suddenly, I felt uncomfortable with the whole situation.
“Why did you invite me to lunch?”
The question just popped out unbidden. His conduct confused me so much that the only way I could think of to handle it was brutal honesty.
“Because I’m curious about you,” he replied without hesitation, and without taking his eyes off me.
I stared down into my lap, examining my new jeans, which I’d bought specifically for this lunch. So silly. As if Jesper Orre cared what I wore—a shopgirl.
“I was curious about you because you treated me like an equal,” he clarified.
I met his eyes. For a moment I thought I caught a glimpse of something hidden in there, pain perhaps, or disgust, as if he’d taken a bite of something bitter.
“An equal?”
He nodded slowly. A collective roar came from the bar. I turned around. On the wall-mounted TV screen, Arsenal had just scored against Manchester United.
Jesper leaned forward across the table, putting his face close to mine, so close that I could smell his aftershave and the beer on his breath. Again I felt discomfort creep over me. “When you are…When you have the job I have,” he corrected himself, “few people behave normally around you. Most people treat you with exaggerated respect. Some don’t even dare to talk to me. Few say what they really think and feel. It’s exhausting. And kind of lonely, if you know what I mean. But you said what you thought. You treated me like a regular person.”
I shrugged. “Aren’t you?”
He laughed and took a sip of beer. His arms were sunburnt and covered in golden hairs.
“Call it crazy, but I felt some kind of connection with you. If you’re honest…”
“Yes?”
“Aren’t you also the kind of person who feels lonely? Odd? Different from the people around you? An…observer?”
I nodded slowly. He was right. I had always felt different. Ever since I was little. Always had the strange feeling that I was playing a supporting role in my own life. That I was sitting in a bubble, looking at myself from the outside. The question was how the hell Jesper Orre could have seen that from ten minutes in the store with me.
Dejected sighs came from the bar. “It hit the post,” said Jesper.
“How…do you know that?”
“What?”
He glanced in confusion toward the TV screen, as if my question was about the game. “About me. You bought a shirt from me and now you’re claiming we’re alike. And that we’re lonely. You don’t know anything about me. Not who I am, where I come from, or what I want from my life. Yet you’re saying…all of this. Like you think you can read me like a book.”
He raised his beer in a toast and winked at me.
“Like I said, I like how you treat me as an equal. And you’re fearless. Like me.”
I left the restaurant on shaky legs. My cheeks were hot and my hands sweaty. I don’t know which I felt more strongly: irritation that he had accurately described me after so little time spent in my company, or the attraction that was already there. And besid
es all that, I couldn’t help but wonder if he was right. Were we alike? Was there a connection, an instant sense of belonging that cut through all the barriers of class and age and profession?
It was just after four as I hurried toward Slussen. The afternoon was warm, and I had only a tank top on. Despite that, sweat was running down between my breasts, and halfway up Götgatan I had to stop to catch my breath. People passed by: pedestrians and shoppers, beggars and veiled women on their way down to the mosque. I felt as if I were in the middle of a flooding river, as if I’d suddenly lost the ability to steer and was bobbing like a stray boat in a sea of people.
When I got to the entrance of the subway, I saw a familiar silhouette in the doorway. Jesper Orre. Somehow he had anticipated where I was going and got there before me.
He took my hand. “Come” was all he said.
He pulled me along with him, and I couldn’t protest, couldn’t argue. The feeling of powerlessness was numbing, yet oddly liberating. A release from responsibility and the guilt that comes with it. I followed him. Closed my eyes and let him lead me through the sea of people.
—
When I wake up it is three o’clock in the morning and I am in a weird, half-reclining position in the armchair. My neck is stiff and hurts when I stand up. Darkness has formed a black wall outside my window, and the wind has picked up. It’s whistling through the cracks, and I can feel cold air around my ankles.
For some reason, it makes me think about my dad, and the insect we found. I must have been ten or eleven years old. The caterpillar, which was strikingly plump and pale green, reminded me a bit of a gummy bear with hair on it. It had the same round shape and semitransparent guts. A bunch of small legs extended from its stomach, and on its tail was a small barb. It tickled as it crawled along my freckled hand and up onto my arm.
“Does it bite?” I asked.
Dad shook his head. “No, the little spike at the back of its body is its anal proboscis. It’s completely harmless.”
The caterpillar kept crawling, and I turned the underside of my arm upward so that the dusty ray of sunlight that cut through the window illuminated its small green body. Suddenly it was almost transparent. Like a sparkling, perfectly polished gemstone resting on my wrist.
“Where did you find it?” Dad asked.
“In the bush by the swings.”
He nodded, then said, “It eats leaves. Come on. Let’s go get some food for it.”
We snuck through the hall so as not to wake up Mom. The front door closed behind us with a click, and Dad nodded to me to follow him out. The buildings that surrounded the small courtyard embraced the sparse greenery with their tall concrete bodies. The sun hadn’t made it above the rooftops yet, and the courtyard lay in shadow. It was also deserted. The swings hung abandoned from their metal bars and the sandbox lay empty in anticipation of the children who would soon wake up. A few cracked plastic shovels lay scattered on the gravel path beside it. In the distance Middle Eastern music played, and a child screamed. The scent of coffee hovered in the early-summer air.
“Here,” I said, and pointed to the bush with the jagged branches.
Dad broke off a few dew-damp twigs in silence, then looked at me seriously. “Now we’re going to build a little nest for it.”
We put branches from the bush into a glass jar, then slipped back into the building as quietly as before. It was dark in the hallway and smelled faintly of Mom’s cigarettes. I could hear her snoring in the bedroom next door. Dad was searching a cupboard. The toolbox rattled. When he came back out into the hall, he had a small, sharp object in his hand.
“This is an awl,” he whispered, and pushed it through the metal lid several times, making little breathing holes for the green inhabitant of the jar. The caterpillar seemed to accept its new home. Apparently, it didn’t ask much from life—a branch and some leaves—because it immediately made itself comfortable on one of the thorny twigs.
“What happens now?”
“Something amazing,” Dad said, and wiped a few drops of sweat from his sunburnt forehead. “Something completely amazing. But you have to have patience. Do you have that?”
I reach for my cellphone. No missed calls. No text messages. Jesper has skipped our engagement dinner without any explanation. Should I be angry or worried? I decide that unless he’s in the emergency room with his legs in casts, he deserves to be chewed out.
With a blanket wrapped around my shoulders, I shuffle into the kitchen. Put the salad, canapés, and wine into the fridge. Then I call to Sigge and go to bed.
—
Gray-blue morning light filters through my thin curtains. The room feels cold and I crawl farther under the covers in search of warmth. Sigge, who is rolled up into a small ball at my feet, wakes up, licks his paws. For a few seconds my mind is empty of everything but the pleasant warmth and the faint sound of raindrops pattering against the window.
Then I remember.
Jesper never showed up yesterday. For some reason, he didn’t come to his own engagement dinner, and I ended up alone in the kitchen with a plate overflowing with canapés and wearing nothing but a low-cut black dress.
My cellphone is on the floor. Still no missed calls. No text messages.
I sit up in bed. The room is cold and a draft leaks in. Even though I wrap the comforter tightly around me as I go over to the window, I can feel cold air seeping through the cracks.
Outside, I watch the morning traffic creep slowly forward on Valhallavägen. Tiny people, barely bigger than ants, make their way toward the subway. I go out into the living room to turn on the news. If something happened—an accident, a crime—maybe they’ll mention it. As I sink into one of the green armchairs, I’m overcome with nausea. How much did I drink yesterday? Maybe I should eat something.
I go to the kitchen and open the refrigerator.
The canapés are lined up neatly on the plate. I grab two, go back to the living room, and turn on the TV. But the screen is black and a brief yellow text states that there’s no signal. I push one of the canapés into my mouth and go back to the kitchen again, feeling fairly sure what’s happened. I carefully move the stack of bills to the table, shove the second canapé into my mouth, and start tearing open envelopes. I pull out reminder after reminder from utility companies, my cellphone provider, and mail-order companies.
In a way, all of this is Jesper’s fault. A month ago I lent him some money, and since then I’ve been putting the bills in a pile rather than paying them. My salary isn’t enough—it never has been—but before I always had a little nest egg to dip into.
I open the last envelope. It’s from the cable company. I glance through its letter threatening termination of my television and broadband subscriptions if I don’t pay my bill within ten days.
The letter is dated two weeks ago.
I toss the envelope aside and pick up the stack of bills. Hesitate a moment, not really knowing what to do with them. Then I push them into the empty bread box. It squeaks as I close the lid.
On the subway, I read the news on my phone. A knifing in Rinkeby, riots in Malmö, but nothing about Jesper Orre. There’s also nothing about any traffic accidents that might have occurred during the night.
The subway car is packed, and the heat and smell of crowded bodies bring on the nausea again. I am forced to get off at the Östermalmstorg station, where I take off my jacket and sit down for a moment on a bench. I put my face in my hands. From the corner of my eye, I see commuters looking at me with puzzled, even anxious glances, but no one stops to ask how I feel, and I’m grateful for that.
All I can think about, all I want to know is: Where is Jesper, and why didn’t he show up last night?
HANNE
Those who claim unhappiness is the result of having too high expectations from life are wrong. I’ve never had any special expectations, didn’t expect happiness, money, or success. And yet here I am, filled with a disappointment that I can’t quite put into words, can’t define, that goe
s beyond what words can describe. Perhaps it’s bigger than I am. Maybe I live inside the disappointment rather than the other way around.
As if it were a house I’m locked inside of.
Part of this is, of course, because I can no longer trust my own body. My intellect, my memory, is disintegrating, fragmenting into small, elusive crumbs that no longer join into any meaningful whole.
I look at the pill organizer on the counter. At all the small white and yellow pills lying in compartments marked with the days of the week. I wonder if any of those pills even have an effect. At my last appointment, the doctor said it was impossible to say anything definite about the course of the disease. It could go fast or slow, take months or years for me to sink into oblivion and confusion. The medicine might work or might not—that too was unpredictable—but the fact that the disease struck me at a relatively young age, only fifty-nine years old, suggests it might become aggressive.
When he said that last bit, about how the disease could become aggressive, I put down the notepad of questions I had prepared. I didn’t want to hear any more.
Sometimes it’s better not to know.
I take the dog food out of the cabinet and immediately hear the patter of paws approaching from the bedroom. There she stands in front of me on the floor, looking up with her dark eyes. Her head is slightly bent forward and her eyes attentive, pleading. You’re ingratiating yourself, I think. Why? Have I ever failed to give you food?
Then I realize that it’s actually possible I’ve forgotten to feed Frida. I forget things all the time now without even knowing it. I look around the cozy kitchen. The cabinets are covered with small yellow Post-it notes, which I use to remind myself of things. Owe hates those notes. Perhaps because he hates my illness, what it does to me, but I suspect he hates what the disease does to him more. How it threatens his self-image and his life’s work: the perfect home; the beautiful, intellectual wife; dinners with friends that go on long into the night. He has hinted that he’d rather not invite anyone over with the kitchen looking like this, and deep down I know that he’s ashamed. Because it is shameful, losing control of yourself in this way, shameful.
The Ice Beneath Her Page 4