As a teenager she numbed the constant feeling of loss with alcohol and drugs, a lifestyle that soon got out of hand, and could have killed her. When she went back to Stefan as a last resort, the need to drink had subsided, but the feeling itself never stopped gnawing at her. A sense of loss can hurl itself at you and sink its teeth in the back of your neck at any moment.
The cars turn into insects, then dots, until they are swallowed up by the endless field. She thinks about Stefan’s last words to her: I love you. He has said it so many times before, but this was different. The tone of voice, the expression, what it meant in this particular context.
I. Love. You. It is easy to say those words—anyone can say them. They are no more than a series of letters. A child to his teddy bear, a gangster to his pit bull; an actor can say them without wanting any more than to sound sincere.
So when Stefan says those words to her, does he mean the same thing she does when she says them to him? That he wants to share his life with her, that he thinks she is a wonderful person, that he just wants to get closer and closer? Is that what she means?
Carina looks towards the horizon, towards the point where she watched their car disappear, and whispers: ‘I love you. I love you both.’
Her voice echoes in the emptiness. Something shifts in her mind, and for a moment she feels as if she no longer exists. As if she has been obliterated, along with the sound of her voice.
*
This time when Peter’s GPS screen turns blue, he doesn’t slow down, but simply presses the button and winds down the window, enjoying the smell of sweat mingled with perfume as he drives on.
If he stopped the car and got out, the women would be standing there waiting, ready to get going, to dance with him. But he resists the temptation.
The engine purrs, and after a slightly late night and a much too early morning, he allows himself to doze for a moment. After all, there is nothing in sight that he could possibly crash into. He drifts off into a waking dream, imagining himself among all those bodies moving in front of him and around him.
Like mermaids they undulate about him in the vast blue expanse, limbs floating…
Blue. Blue.
Peter gasps and opens his eyes, slams his foot on the brake. He doesn’t know how long he has been gone. One minute? Two? Five? He shakes his head, looks in the rear-view mirror. Nothing.
How stupid is he? The map might have been incorrect, but at least it enabled him to find his way back. The dot on the blue screen tells him nothing. He has no idea whether he might have turned the wheel while his eyes were closed, whether the car has deviated from the straight line.
The wonderful smells have disappeared, and it seems as if the air has grown cooler. Peter’s throat tightens. There is no sun to help him work out which is backwards, forwards, right or left in relation to his starting point. He could well be lost.
He stares at the GPS screen, his broken contact with the rest of the world.
Hang on a minute.
He leans closer, screwing up his eyes. Something is appearing, so faint that it could be a figment of his imagination, an apparition lingering on his retina, but he thinks he can just make out a map amid the blue. A new map.
*
‘Bit monotonous.’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you want me to drive for a bit?’
‘No, you stick with the canes.’
Lennart and Olof have inserted seven garden canes in the ground since the campsite disappeared from view. When Olof pulls up to let Lennart get out with number eight, he hears a faint sound from the engine. A grating sound.
‘That’s just what we need,’ he says. ‘To break down out here.’
‘Switch off. Let her rest for a while.’
Olof smiles at Lennart’s habit of calling any kind of vehicle ‘she’. The tractor is a she, the forklift truck is a she; he has even heard Lennart refer to the automatic milking system as female. She’s not programmed correctly.
Olof kills the engine and jiggles the handle to get the door open. He steps out of the car. In the deep silence he hears a ticking sound from the engine; he places his hand on the bonnet, which is hotter than it should be.
‘Does the radiator need topping up?’ Lennart wonders as he pushes the cane into the ground on the other side of the car.
‘I don’t think so. I topped it up the other day.’
Leaning on the bumper for support, Olof kneels down and examines the undercarriage of the car. Nothing dripping. He gets up slowly to avoid a dizzy spell, and discovers that Lennart is now staring out across the field, arms folded.
‘Can you see anything?’ Olof asks.
‘No. I’m just thinking. Fantastic arable land.’
‘Or grazing land.’
Lennart crouches down and pulls up a few blades of grass, rubbing them between his fingers and sniffing. ‘Seems a bit poor,’ he says, holding out his hand to Olof. ‘What do you think?’
Olof bends down and sniffs, then feels silly. He pulls up a few blades for himself and does the same thing. He has to agree with Lennart. There is something weak and diluted about the almost imperceptible smell of the grass, and the blades feel brittle between his fingers. As if the grass lacks both water and nutrients.
He carries on rubbing the blades between his fingers as he looks up at the sky. ‘Do you think it rains here?’
‘I suppose it must do. Otherwise how could the grass grow?’
‘If it is growing.’
‘You’ve got a point there,’ Lennart says, gazing around at the grass, which is exactly the same length wherever you look. ‘But it’s definitely alive.’
Olof sniffs the blades in his hand once more, and says: ‘I’m not so sure about that.’
*
Majvor’s job is to monitor the radio. Keep it switched on and listen out for anything other than golden oldies. Make a note of what comes on so that they can find out if the songs are on a loop, or if they keep playing new ones.
So far they have been new ones, although that’s not strictly true. The songs are old. Wonderful old songs. Majvor has been a devoted listener to the Swedish pop chart for over forty years, and is ideally suited to this task. She doesn’t need a presenter to tell her the name of the artist or the title of the song so that she can add them to her list.
Right now, for example, she needs to hear only the introductory bass notes before writing down: Claes-Göran Hederström, ‘It’s Beginning to Seem Like Love’. Not one of her favourites, but she still knows her Claes-Göran. Yes indeed.
She keeps time with her foot as she pours herself a drop of coffee from the thermos. She raises her cup in a toast to the empty chair on the other side of the table where James Stewart is sitting.
‘So, Jimmy,’ she says. ‘How do you think this is all going to work out?’
James Stewart doesn’t answer. He merely smiles his melancholy smile and looks at her with his soft, kind eyes. It is only in exceptional circumstances that Majvor imagines a conversation; his silent presence is usually enough.
Perhaps it is because this is such a crazy day that she has chosen to let Jimmy appear as Elwood P. Dowd, the man whose companion is an invisible six-foot-tall rabbit in the film Harvey. Jimmy’s trademark expression of slightly confused niceness was never more appropriate, and Majvor knows the dialogue virtually off by heart.
They listen to Claes-Göran together, and Jimmy smiles at the words ‘bang bang’. Perhaps he is thinking of one of his many cowboy films. No one can handle a revolver with such effortless elegance as Jimmy; the gun is simultaneously a necessary evil and an extension of his hand. Not like Donald and his shotguns.
James Stewart looks away, pretending to study Majvor’s wall-hanging as her thoughts turn to Donald. She hopes he’s okay. She always does. She knows his terrible story, and she has made it her life’s work to look after him, make sure his life works.
What she can’t say for sure is whether she has ever loved him. Probably not. She has nothin
g to compare her feelings to, but from books, films and what other people have said she has come to realise that there is a kind of love she has never experienced, and never will.
There is nothing she can do about it now. When she occasionally feels down about all those years wasted taking care of someone else, James Stewart is always there by her side. He is her secret, her Harvey.
*
Donald has been driving for fifteen minutes, sticking to around eighty kilometres an hour all the time, so he should have travelled about twenty kilometres. Still nothing. Still only the field and the field and the fucking field he can see through the windscreen.
This is a mistake. He doesn’t quite know what he had been expecting, but possibly that he would drive up a hill, reach the top and be able to see all around. But it’s just the same unbroken horizon out there in front of him, offering nothing beyond itself.
When the GPS screen turned blue, Donald didn’t slow down at all, didn’t even consider stopping to push sticks into the ground like those other fools. Okay, he can’t carry on like this forever, sooner or later the deviation will be too great, but surely he can drive in a straight line for a few kilometres.
Strange images came into his mind as he drove into the blue. He thought he was driving through Las Vegas, where both John F Kennedy and Elvis were due to appear, and were just waiting for Donald so that they could get started.
With a wry smile Donald thought that dementia has its advantages after all. Fantasies become so real that you feel you could step right into them. On the other hand there are names for people who do that kind of thing: nutcases, fruit loops, loonies. So Donald had ignored the temptations of Vegas and put his foot down.
And there you go: after a little while his resolve begins to bear fruit. On the blank screen the map starts to appear once more. Donald nods with satisfaction, following a road that he will be able to follow again on the way back. The map becomes clearer and clearer, but he finds it difficult to see things close up, and he can only just make out the letters.
What the fuck?
He slows down and digs his reading glasses out of the glove compartment. When he sees what the GPS screen is telling him, he takes his foot off the accelerator and stops the car, sits there with the engine ticking over.
Åkerö, Gillberga, Lilltorp.
When he drove away, the GPS had claimed that they were in the same place as on the previous evening: the campsite ten kilometres south of Trosa. Then the arrow kept on moving west until the screen turned blue. Now it is saying that he is in the area where he grew up, one hundred and fifty kilometres to the north. It is physically impossible for him to have driven that distance. He puts the car into first gear and edges forward. He should now be crossing Norrtäljevägen and driving through the forest towards Åkerö and…Riddersholm.
A chill runs down Donald’s spine. He pushes his glasses up onto the top of his head and gazes out across the field—towards Riddersholm, according to the GPS. There is nothing to see, but it feels as if the air has grown thinner, and it is difficult to get enough oxygen. Donald takes a few deep breaths to ease the pressure inside his skull. He studies the screen again. There is something wrong with Norrtäljevägen.
When the E18 was extended at the beginning of the 1970s, the route between Norrtälje and Kapellskär became five kilometres shorter, as a straighter motorway sliced through the landscape. But the road on the GPS map winds its way through the villages, and judging by the width, it isn’t even a motorway.
Donald scrolls up and down, zooms out. There is no doubt whatsoever. The route on the screen is the old road, large sections of which have been forgotten and overgrown for almost forty years.
Donald rubs his eyes and breathes, breathes.
What the hell is wrong with the air?
Then he opens the car door and gets out.
It is colder now, and he gets gooseflesh on his arms when he leaves the interior of the car with its controlled temperature. There really is something strange about the air. Donald opens his eyes wide, relaxes, opens wide again, relaxes, but the phenomenon remains.
It’s just like when you stand up too quickly after bending down, and tiny pinpricks of light seem to be floating in front of your eyes. Kind of like that, but the dots of light are smaller and there are more of them. The air is shimmering, as if it has a light of its own.
Donald rubs his arms as his eyes sweep the horizon. The movement of his pupils stops. He screws up his eyes. A shudder like a bolt of low-voltage electricity passes over his skin, and it is not the cooler air that is making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He thinks he can see something. A figure.
He squints, trying to focus, but what he is seeing still doesn’t make sense. Suddenly he knows what to do. The shudder runs down his back as he opens the car door and takes out his shotgun. He places the butt against his shoulder, looks through the sight and slowly traces his way along the line between earth and sky until he finds the figure.
Judging by its shape it must be human, but when Donald gets a closer look he almost fires, his index finger, resting on the trigger out of sheer habit, twitching in an involuntary spasm. The gun slips out of his hands and falls to the ground as Donald stands there with his lower lip trembling. It is one specific detail, a mutilation, that makes his stomach turn. He almost collapses, and leans on the car for support.
The car.
He has the car.
Donald lets out a sob, grabs the gun and throws it on the back seat. He catches his shin as he scrambles into the driver’s seat and slams the door. His teeth are chattering as he turns the key, and for one dreadful moment he thinks the car isn’t going to start, that he will be stranded here with
the Bloodman
but the car starts with a roar because he has floored the accelerator. He tells himself to ease off and manages to put the car in first without wrecking the gearbox.
A second later he floors the pedal again and spins the wheel all the way round. He daren’t even use the clutch to engage a higher gear. He just has to get away from here as quickly as possible. Away from the Bloodman.
*
Benny has been lying in wait for a long time. The door of Cat’s caravan is open, and Cat’s masters have gone. Benny’s master has gone too. It is an interesting state of affairs. Cat is no longer visible in the window. Benny is waiting.
Behind him his mistress is singing, the same thing that is coming out of the box on the table. It doesn’t sound good, and Benny turns his head towards the field to spare his ears.
He remembers the smell of Grandchildren and the strange feeling. The field is not good. In here among the caravans it is fine. This is his place. That is what he intends to make clear to Cat, if he gets the chance.
And what do you know—here comes Cat!
Cat is weird. Cat runs out of the door and starts washing herself without glancing in Benny’s direction. Dog would have behaved in a completely different way. Been more alert. Benny fires off a short bark. Cat raises her head and gives him a look, then goes back to washing herself, as if Benny were of no interest whatsoever.
Benny takes a few steps towards Cat as a growl forms deep in his throat. Cat freezes. Benny moves closer and the growl feels good, makes him stronger. He will show Cat who is boss.
Cat turns to face him and grows. Benny stops. Cat is now almost as big as he is. He has seen the phenomenon before, but it doesn’t make it any less alarming. How does Cat do that? But it is too late now. Benny moves forward, the growl interspersed with little barks. He is angry.
At this point Cat does something unexpected, something Benny has not experienced before. She starts to come towards him, making her noise and showing her teeth. Benny isn’t sure what to do. He stops. The growl fades away. Cat is not doing what she is supposed to do.
Before Benny has time to work out what is going on, Cat is standing in front of him. She hits him across the nose with her claws out. Cat has sharp claws, and it really hurts.
/> The capacity for thought leaves him completely and his body takes over. Benny lets out a howl, turns around and runs as fast as he can, back to the awning and into his basket.
When he raises his head he sees Cat stalking around the open space without giving him so much as a look. Benny buries his sore nose in his blanket and closes his eyes.
*
Stefan and Carina have lots of photograph albums. In this digital age they still take the trouble to order prints of their pictures, then they sit side by side at the kitchen table, cropping them manually with a craft knife and sticking them in. They find great satisfaction in the activity itself, reliving their memories, then sorting and cataloguing them. Creating an archive of their lives, concrete objects they can hold in their hands. Images stored on a computer can never be the same; there is no weight in a pdf file.
They have also produced a condensed version. They selected the best pictures over all the years, ordered copies, then stuck these in a special album that they always take with them on their travels. A little security measure, holding on to the very best moments.
Right now Carina is leafing through this best-of album.
Stefan and Carina in front of a waterfall in Norway, the year before Emil was born. Emil as a newborn, as a baby, his very first steps. Stefan in an impressive elf costume, Carina with the giant chanterelle she found behind the shed, the three of them together on that wonderful little beach on the island of Gotland. Stefan teaching Emil to use the binoculars. Stefan and Carina with the new sign for the store.
Carina glances over the pictures, her mind adding details, smells and feelings that cannot be seen in the photographs. Taken all together, these fragments form a composite of the last six years of her life.
A dog barks outside the caravan, and she looks up. The dog barks again, then suddenly whimpers and falls silent. As Carina returns to the album, she is struck by an unpleasant thought.
What if I had never existed?
I Am Behind You Page 8