The Ice Beneath Her

by Camilla Grebe

  HANNE

  Long before I became interested in behavioral science, I studied social anthropology. I plowed through Franz Boas and Bronislaw Malinowski and dreamed about conducting a yearlong field study of the Inuit in northern Greenland, perhaps because I watched that old documentary Nanook of the North as a child. But this was in the seventies, so in the wake of increasingly loud demands for a more activist anthropology, interest in picturesque indigenous peoples with no geopolitical importance decreased.

  The Eskimos weren’t “in” anymore.

  Despite that, I’ve maintained my interest in anthropology. And perhaps this was why Owe occasionally brought back small presents from indigenous people after his travels.

  Or so I thought.

  After a medical conference in Miami in the eighties, he gave me a braided mesh mask made by the Huichol people in western Mexico. Another time, when he’d been at a psychiatry conference in South Africa, he gave me an antique tobacco pouch from the Xhosa people. And so on. In the end, almost the entire bookshelf was full of Owe’s souvenirs.

  It must have taken me ten years to realize those gifts were compensation for something else altogether. I don’t really remember how I caught him. Maybe the phone rang in the middle of the night now and then, and there was only silence on the other end when I answered. Maybe a letter arrived with the word “Private” written on it. But mostly it was due to Evelyn.

  Evelyn, an American in her forties, was Owe’s therapist, which in and of itself wasn’t remarkable. In our social circles everyone had at least one therapist. Visiting your psychoanalyst several times a week was considered perfectly normal. I think it was even a bit of a status symbol. So Owe spent a considerable amount of his free time talking about his childhood on Evelyn’s chaise longue.

  He often seemed exhausted when he got home. Sweaty, absentminded, and with a glazed look in his eyes, he’d sink down on the sofa in the living room and demand to be left alone. On those occasions, I was always a little extra-loving toward him, because I assumed he’d been discussing some difficult topic. His father’s illness maybe, or his mother’s partiality to painkillers and tranquilizers. But one December evening, when we’d been married for about ten years, I caught him. I remember I woke up because I was cold. The radiators weren’t working so well at the time, and the comforter had slipped off. I realized Owe wasn’t lying next to me and went out into the hall to see what he was doing. I could hear a whispered conversation in the kitchen, and I stayed silent and crept closer without giving myself away.

  He was speaking English. And it wasn’t about work. It didn’t take me long to figure out it was Evelyn on the phone, and that their relationship wasn’t at all what I’d been led to believe.

  I considered rushing into the kitchen and ripping the phone from his ear, slapping him, or maybe throwing something to the floor, but instead I turned around and went back to the bedroom and pulled the comforter over my head, filled with an intense, inexpressible contempt. Because contempt is what I felt, not sadness or anger or jealousy. I couldn’t respect his disgusting hypocrisy—the fact that he never told me about Evelyn or any of the others, yet constantly reproached me for my indiscretions.

  Because yes, I’d been unfaithful as well. More than once. And especially in the beginning of our relationship. But it was another time then—people had “open” relationships and practiced polygamy and God knows what else, and I never lied or hid my affairs. Now and then I ended up in bed with another man after some boozy party, and Owe’s reaction was always the same: He took me home—carried me if need be—and talked some sense into me. Treated me like I was a kid who’d missed her curfew or perhaps got caught shoplifting. And it put me at a moral disadvantage—which he’d used, I now realized, to sleep with Evelyn three times a week on her therapist’s couch.

  I think that was when I started to hate him.

  When I met Peter, I felt that there was no reason to deny myself real love. Why should I? Owe had allowed himself to fall in love with that American bitch.

  In a way, it felt like a rebellion to initiate a relationship with a man like Peter. He wasn’t an intellectual, he lived in a tiny apartment in the suburbs, and he loved watching sports. In short, he was the kind of man our friends would refer to, with slight condescension, as an “average Joe.” Someone whose dreams didn’t go beyond his next vacation or a new car and who thought Chekhov was a brand of vodka.

  I never really learned that much about Peter’s background. He told me his mother was politically active and engaged in the antiwar movement, that he used to go with her to meetings and demonstrations as a child. On those occasions, I would think he very well could have been raised among my friends. But despite his background, he wasn’t at all interested in politics. I suppose that happens often—we deliberately choose a different life from the one our parents lived.

  In any case, Owe’s inflated self-esteem took a severe blow when he realized I was seriously considering leaving him—even after Peter left me to my fate on the sidewalk on Skeppargatan that night.

  But all my frustrations with Owe, which culminated that night, eventually turned to resignation and a kind of passivity. Falling in love again, learning to trust another man the way I did Peter—only to be let down again—seemed unthinkable.

  So I stayed, for lack of any better alternatives. That’s the way life works. And now he’s crept into my life again.

  Peter.

  The only man who’s meant anything to me in the last fifteen years. A haggard policeman with low self-esteem and a pathological fear of commitment. Just a few hours ago he was lying in bed next to me. On me. In me. And all I can think about is when I’ll see him again.

  Maybe I’m turning into Gunilla, I think, and remember her words.

  We’re so incredibly…attracted to each other. Horny, to be vulgar about it. Is that allowed, at our age?

  Starting our relationship again is, of course, out of the question. Not only because I’m afraid of being left again, but also because I’m sliding into an incurable disease. A dark tunnel of oblivion and decay. It feels as if I’m a spelunker about to enter a mountain through a crack, and I know it will get only narrower and narrower, until I’m firmly inside the bedrock with no way of getting myself out.

  And in there, not even Peter could help me.

  —

  When I arrive at the police station, his colleagues are sorting through tips received about the drawing of the dead woman. I look through the pictures of the young women, hoping that none is identical to the victim in Orre’s house. But whether one of these particular pictures does or doesn’t match up, eventually one will, of course. There’s no way to escape that. Someone is lying in a refrigerated compartment at Forensic Medicine, waiting to get her name and history back. Albeit posthumously.

  I avoid looking at Peter. Not because I regret what happened last night, but just because I don’t really know what to say or do. It’s been a long time since I found myself in a situation like this. Like a teenager. “So, we had, like, sex yesterday, but I don’t really know if he ‘likes me’ likes me or if we’ll do it again, or whatever.”

  It’s actually laughable. Maybe the funniest thing that’s happened to me in years.

  How long has it been since I had sex, anyway? I don’t know exactly—maybe five years?

  I remember I used to tell Owe I had a headache. Not because it was a good excuse, but because it was such a terrible excuse that it would make it clear to him that I didn’t want to sleep with him anymore.

  And it did.

  Eventually, he stopped touching me that way at all. Just went quietly to bed every evening and turned off the light without even giving me a kiss. I knew it was meant as a punishment. But it suited me just fine. I was tired of him, even though I never seriously considered trying to leave him again.

  And then came the disease. It started with forgetting names. It could be the name of a friend we’d socialized with for years. Or—even more common—the na
me of a place.

  Sundsvall, Soderhamn, Sollefteå. Örebro, Örkelljunga, Örgryte. Arboga, Abisko, Arvika.

  Who the hell can keep track of all of that? If it had stopped there, I doubt Owe would have noticed anything. But then I started missing appointments, forgetting to call friends back like I’d promised, and losing my credit card and my cellphone.

  One day I forgot Frida outside the grocery store, and when I got home, I couldn’t remember where I’d left her. I called Owe in a panic, and a week later he forced me to go to the doctor, who wrote me a referral to a memory clinic.

  The memory clinic.

  I linger on the words. It sounds so poetic and absurd at the same time. Like a play by Kristina Lugn or a book by Kurt Vonnegut.

  Not that it was particularly poetic or absurd at the clinic itself. It was mostly just a lot of tests and questions, and after a few months the doctors came to the conclusion that I have emergent dementia, but what form they couldn’t say. Nor how quickly it would develop or whether or not the pills could help me.

  I look at my colleagues sitting at their desks. I wonder what they’d think if they knew that they have a colleague with “mild cognitive impairment.” That the experienced behaviorist who charges nine hundred kronor per hour to consult is slipping into the great oblivion. I may not be able to distinguish a banana from a baton in a few months.

  Manfred comes over to me. He’s as stylish as usual, like a peacock, and he squats down beside my chair.

  “Good fucking work on those matches,” he says.

  “Thanks.”

  “So do you think the murderer and the victims knew each other?”

  “Based on the mode of killing, yes. I think they had some kind of relationship, and that the murderer was seeking revenge on the victims. Punishing them.”

  “And if you had to guess, what kind of relationship did they have?”

  “Strong emotions must have been involved. On the other side of that hatred there must have been something else. Something equally strong. Hate doesn’t occur in a vacuum.”

  “Like what?”

  I think for a moment. “Love, for example.”

  —

  At lunch, I get a text message from Owe. He writes that he wants to apologize for his behavior and his threats. That he’s doing well, that he loves me, and that he doesn’t think he can live without me.

  That’s surely true. But I don’t respond. Instead I buy a salad and sit down in the conference room with Sanchez and Manfred, who are about to brief the investigators in sorting through tips. It’s not really that important for me to be here. I could go home to Gunilla’s apartment and read a book on the sofa instead, but I don’t want to.

  A younger investigator, Simone, who has dreadlocks down to her waist, cocks her head to one side and says:

  “We can remove Wilhelmina Andrén from the investigation, the woman who escaped from the psychiatric ward at Danderyd Hospital. A dog owner found her frozen to death near the sound in Solna this morning. Her parents identified her, so there’s no doubt about her identity.”

  “Poor bastard,” Manfred mumbles, and strokes his red stubble. Simone nods and continues:

  “So that leaves Angelica Wennerlind and Emma Bohman. Dental records have been sent to Solna, and we should get our answers no later than tomorrow.”

  “I thought we’d hear back tonight,” Manfred says.

  “The forensic dentist is in Skövde and needs a few hours to get here,” Simone says.

  At that moment, the door opens and Peter walks in. His cheeks are red, and he has snow on his leather jacket. He doesn’t bother to take it off or sit down. Instead, he points to Manfred and me.

  “Come with me. We have a colleague here who says she met Emma Bohman three weeks ago. Apparently she and Jesper Orre did have a relationship.”

  EMMA

  THREE WEEKS EARLIER

  “I have to pay some bills. Can I borrow the computer in the office for a bit?”

  Mahnoor shrugs her shoulders, puts a little lip gloss on her index finger. She’s going with the baggy look today. Her jeans hang dangerously low on her hips, exposing the edge of her lace panties.

  “Sure.”

  I’m surprised she doesn’t object. I have several more excuses ready to explain why I need to do this right now, when we’re just about to open. But Mahnoor just smiles sweetly and disappears into the store. I hear her and Olga talking in the distance; it sounds as if they’re laughing, and it makes me stop and think.

  It feels different. Everything feels different. The store seems brighter. Olga and Mahnoor are in a better mood. It’s even sunny outside. But nothing has really changed, except that I have taken back the power over my own life again.

  Maybe that was all I needed?

  It’s easier than I expected to find what I’m looking for online, though I have to spend a little time researching. I have no idea which model is best or how many volts I need. After twenty minutes, I order the small device that looks like a cellphone. The website promises delivery within twenty-four hours, but as long as it arrives within three days, it’s fine by me. Then I take the business card out of my jeans pocket.

  Anders Jönsson, freelance journalist.

  Before I call, I go over to the door, crack it open, and peek out into the shop. Olga is helping a customer at the checkout counter, and Mahnoor is folding jeans, swaying a little in time to the music.

  Anders Jönsson answers after the third ring. At first, he doesn’t seem to remember me, so I explain: that he found me in the store, that I didn’t want to talk to him then, but I would be willing to now. He’s silent for a moment. Then he excitedly says he’d love to meet me. As soon as possible. Maybe even today?

  So easy, I think. That was so easy.

  —

  Summer was exploding in shades of green outside the windows of the hallway we were walking down. The echo of our steps bounced like Ping-Pong balls between the concrete walls. I did my best to keep up with him, but he was walking so fast. Hurrying toward the entrance, where the sun streamed down through the large glass doors, making the dirt-brown floors glow.

  “You know we can’t see each other, Emma. You understand that, right?”

  He turned to me and we stood there, outside the physics lab. The drab walls seemed to be getting closer, as if the hallway were narrowing, and I started having trouble breathing. The ceiling was tilting ominously. It was white, with black stains here and there.

  Woody put his hand on my forearm. Patted it gently, which once again made me feel like a little kid. Didn’t he understand how that felt, how demeaning and destructive his gesture was?

  My cheeks turned hot. From shame, but also from something else. Rage. He’d taken advantage of me, played with me. Sucked and licked and penetrated and kissed and caressed and all the rest. But then he didn’t want me anymore. Then he was through with me. He had taken what he wanted, and that was enough for him.

  And here I was.

  “What do you mean ‘can’t’ see each other?” I said, and regretted it immediately, because the last thing I wanted was for him to see me as a clingy little kid.

  He looked at me blankly, took a step backward, as if he’d suddenly discovered I smelled bad.

  “You had no problem with it before,” I added.

  “I don’t understand,” he said as the bell rang and all the doors opened into the hallway. And he looked genuinely worried, he really did.

  Students poured out of classrooms, rushing past us, a river of teenage flesh, but his gaze stayed firmly on me.

  “I want to help you, Emma, but not in that way.”

  And at that moment, I fell apart.

  The corridor collapsed around me, and the stained ceiling cracked. I died. In a cloud of concrete dust, I’d ceased to exist. My body was crushed. The pain clawed and pounded in every cell. My atoms were torn asunder, annihilated, had disappeared. The only thing that remained was the pulsating pain and shame.

  —


  On Lützengatan I trudge through drifts of yellow maple leaves. It feels like walking through deep snow. The scent of decomposing vegetation tingles inside my nostrils. A gust of wind catches a few leaves, which swirl above me like swallows. I stop in the middle of the street with my eyes on the leaves, as if hypnotized by the scene.

  I’d forgotten that life could be so beautiful. So perfect.

  He’s standing outside the bakery on Valhallavägen, just as he promised. I recognize him immediately. He’s wearing the same old parka. The wind flutters his thin yellow hair above his head so comically that I have to force myself not to stare. We greet each other and enter into the warmth. It’s as cramped and dark as usual. There are a few seats along the wall, and we settle in, each with a coffee and a cardamom bun.

  “So, how are things at work?”

  He makes the questions sound innocent. As if we’re two old friends grabbing a coffee together, talking about what we’ve been up to for the past few months.

  “It’s okay.”

  “Really?”

  He raises his pale eyebrows. Looks surprised. But I’ve decided not to tell him I got fired. It would smack of revenge—which it is.

  Your job for my job, Jesper.

  “Oh, well, you know how it is for us.”

  He nods, swallowing half the cardamom bun in one bite. “It’s awful.”

  He stresses every syllable, as if to emphasize just how horrible he thinks it is.

  “Umm-hmm.”

  “How do you handle it?”

  “It’s a job. And I need the money.”

  “Long live capitalism,” he mumbles, his expression suddenly bitter.

  “I have no choice.”

  He nods slowly. “I understand. That’s why it’s so brave of you to come here today. What was it you wanted to tell me?”

  He seems very curious suddenly. The troubled expression is gone. I lower my voice and lean over the small table, so that the woman behind the counter doesn’t hear me.

  “Jesper Orre. I know things about him.”

  “I’m listening,” he says, and leans in closer, so close I see the sugar granules in the corners of his mouth and smell the coffee on his breath.