What if she had actually managed to kill herself in her teenage years, or if she had never been born? Who would have been standing next to Stefan by the waterfall, who would have given birth to Emil and found that chanterelle? Someone else? No one at all?
She tries to place another woman beside Stefan, to give Emil a new mother, the store a new part-owner. It is impossible. The only thing she can do is to erase herself from the photographs and to add in a ghostly figure without a face, a non-Carina.
She carries on looking through the album, and the thought is actually not unpleasant at all, merely unaccustomed. When she was a teenager she often played with the idea: I don’t exist. The last few years have been so hectic, so filled with practicalities that there has been no space, but it doesn’t scare her. In fact it’s a kind of consolation. A person who doesn’t exist carries no guilt.
Carina closes the album and sneezes. Enough. She decides to make herself a cup of coffee.
She takes out the jar of instant, pours some water into a pan and switches on the gas stove. Or rather she doesn’t. She presses the ignition button a couple of times and the little blue spark flashes, but nothing else happens. No sound of hissing gas. She tries the other ring, which is equally silent. She opens the door of the refrigerator, which also runs on gas, and sticks her hand inside. Only the faintest hint of a chill remains, so she quickly closes the door.
Stefan checked the cylinder before they set off, and it was half full. More than enough for a week, which means something else must be wrong. A blockage in the pipe, or God forbid, a leak.
Carina goes around the back of the caravan and sees that the door of the box housing the cylinder is partly open. If there’s one thing Stefan is particularly careful about, it is making sure that door is kept shut. Carina opens it and gasps.
The hose that connects the cylinder to the pipe inside the caravan is broken. Only a short section remains attached to the cylinder itself. It doesn’t make sense. Only last year they fitted a new hose in order to avoid this very situation, because rubber has a tendency to perish over time.
She checks the raw edge to see if the rubber is dry and crumbly to the touch. No. It is soft and pliable, just as it should be. When she pulls the two ends towards her, she realises that they are too short to meet, and therefore cannot be repaired. A fairly large section is missing, and the problem has not been caused by age or wear and tear. The ends are clean and smooth. As if the hose has been cut.
*
Peter has grabbed several garden canes and got out of the car. Now that he has deciphered the new map on the GPS screen, he feels it is absolutely essential to try to orientate himself, maintain some sense of direction, some kind of foothold.
He looks around. Nothing but grass, in all directions. Nothing to indicate that he is where the GPS claims he is: in Vällingby, to the west of Stockholm. Nothing except the feeling.
To what extent can we make our memories into a reality? If an event has been imprinted on us with the violence of the branding iron, or the joy of sheer bliss, if it is encapsulated within us like a moment that will live forever, does that also mean that we can really go back there, to some degree?
Maybe, maybe not. But we carry every defining moment of our lives with us like an intangible perception, impossible to describe to anyone else. We think about that moment and there is something special there, a sensory label that applies only to that moment.
However much Peter pats the bonnet of his great big smart grownup car that he was able to afford by playing grown-up football, the GPS does not lie. On some important level Peter is in Vällingby right now, on the evening when he was seven years old and started to believe in God.
When he was only five years old his mother had already taught him to say evening prayers, and she would sometimes tell him bedtime stories from the Bible. He liked it. She was a good storyteller, and he enjoyed the cosiness of sharing prayers, though he didn’t believe in God. He would have liked to, but his father loathed everything to do with religion.
His father was often angry and unpleasant, especially when he was drunk, and sometimes he hit Peter’s mother. Peter didn’t want to be like him, and thought it would be nice to believe along with his mother, but he didn’t have the courage. He could have believed in secret, but then again it did all sound a bit odd: God and Jesus and the mystery of the cross and the loaves and fishes, and it really, really is impossible to walk on water.
His father grew worse over the years. No job, friends who let him down, and more and more bottles in the pantry. Peter didn’t understand why he and his mother had to stay; his mother said it was hard to explain, but they must trust in God and everything would be all right.
Until one evening when Peter was seven, and his father came home roaring drunk. Peter had gone to bed after half-heartedly saying his evening prayer when he heard the front door open. He could tell from the sound of the movements, the coughing, the way his father was breathing, the way he put down his feet: his father was extremely drunk and very angry. Peter pressed his hands over his ears before it started.
It took a couple of minutes, then came the usual noises. The thuds, the muffled cries, things falling on the floor. Peter shut his eyes tight to prevent any of it getting to him. Behind his eyelids he assembled an arsenal of weapons: machine guns, pistols, grenades and axes. He seized them in his dream hands and used them against his father.
It didn’t stop. It usually stopped. It went on for a little while, then he could uncover his ears. If his mother was crying, he would cover them up again until that stopped too.
But not tonight. It just went on and on. And his mother was screaming. She didn’t normally do that. An atom bomb fell through Peter’s head, landed right on top of his father and obliterated him forever. His mother screamed again.
Peter usually just felt sick and embarrassed, but now he was really frightened, and started shaking. What if he kills her? His legs trembling, he got up and put on his Mickey Mouse dressing-gown, which was made of thick towelling and provided at least some protection. He opened his bedroom door.
His father was yelling something about ‘putting stupid ideas in the fucking kid’s head’ and ‘not even Jesus wants your fucking cunt’, but the worst thing was what Peter could hear in the pauses. His mother’s breathing. It was a kind of gurgle, as if she had something wet in her throat. His father let out a roar, then there was a clattering from the kitchen, heavy footsteps.
Peter reached the living room door as his father emerged from the kitchen, carrying a hammer. His mother was half-lying on the floor, with blood on her face and one eye swollen shut. She had one hand on her belly; the other was clutching a wooden crucifix.
Peter’s father stepped forward, raised the hammer and bellowed: ‘See how you like this, you fucking—’ Peter opened his mouth to scream as loud as he could, and at the same time his mother looked up and held out the crucifix as a last defence against her husband.
That was when it happened. The scream that had been on its way out of Peter’s mouth turned into a gasp as his father was hurled backwards, as if a shock wave of force had surged out of the crucifix and struck him in the chest. He staggered back two steps and dropped the hammer as he fell over the coffee table. He hit the edge of the table, then lay there shaking his head as if to deny what had just happened.
His mother crawled over and picked up the hammer. Peter’s lips moved as he soundlessly whispered, ‘Kill him. Kill him,’ but his mother only managed to push the hammer under the sofa before she collapsed again, pressing the crucifix to her breast. Peter ran over and curled up beside her, putting his arms around her. Perhaps the faint warmth radiating from the crucifix onto his forearm was a figment of his imagination, perhaps not.
His father got to his feet and stood there swaying, looking down at Peter, his mother, the crucifix. Then he turned around and staggered out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him.
That same night Peter and his mother got a cab and went
to a women’s refuge, and a life in safe accommodation began. That night Peter started to believe in God.
Peter walks behind the car and pushes a garden cane into the ground. A new smell rises to meet him. Blood.
The smell of blood that surrounded his mother that night. The blood that wouldn’t stop pouring from her nose, the blood that had dried on her hands, her face, the smell that filled Peter’s nostrils as he sat close beside her in the cab.
Mum.
Tears fill his eyes. Angrily he dashes them away and turns to face the field and the car, expanding his chest muscles like a challenge.
Just you try it. Go on, just try.
He started to believe in God when he was seven, stopped when he was eleven. He has no illusions. In a couple of strides he reaches the car door, gets in and starts the engine. He drives until the cane has almost disappeared from view, then he stops, gets out, and pushes another one into the ground.
Then he drives on. Further and further.
*
Seven more canes, one kilometre further out. Lennart and Olof are leaning against the back of the car, letting the engine rest for a little while.
‘I think it’s got cooler, don’t you?’ Olof asks.
‘Now you come to mention it, yes I do.’
They are contemplating the row of canes stretching back towards the campsite. They can see four. Lennart closes one eye and notes with satisfaction that they are in a perfectly straight line. Nothing slapdash about their work. He says: ‘We create our own space, don’t we?’
‘I think you’re going to have to explain that.’
Lennart nods at the canes. ‘It’s like putting up a fence. You have an area, and that’s all there is to it. Then you put up the fence, and it becomes something else. Something you can call your own.’
‘I suppose so, although the question is whether you are fencing something in, or keeping something out. And there are many different kinds of fence.’
‘This one isn’t much of a fence at all.’
‘No.’
They stand there side by side, each lost in his own thoughts. Olof turns his face up to the empty blue sky, while Lennart gazes across the unchanging expanse of grass. Then Olof says: ‘That time when Ingela shot through. I looked after the animals and so on, but I don’t think I ate anything for three days.’
‘I was the same when Agnetha disappeared,’ Lennart said. ‘I didn’t bother eating. I just didn’t feel like it.’
‘I drank beer. You can get by on that.’
‘Not in the long term.’
‘No.’
‘And it’s a bad habit to get into.’
‘Yes, but what can you do? I felt kind of disorientated, as if nothing was where it was supposed to be any more.’
‘Everything seemed unfamiliar,’ Lennart says.
‘Exactly. Unfamiliar. I stroked the cat, and it wasn’t the same cat, somehow.’
‘Things were…mute. Dead.’
‘Yes. Everything had moved away from me.’
They fall silent. Stare at the field. Olof blinks a few times, peers at the canes. Then he says: ‘This is a strange conversation.’
‘Is it?’
‘No, not really. But it’s unusual.’
‘I thought it was good.’
‘Me too.’
Lennart peers at the grass around his feet for a while. He crouches down and runs his hand over the surface, then digs with his fingers, moving them around until he has a handful of earth. He rubs it between his palms, then slowly shakes his head.
‘Not much good?’ Olof wonders.
‘No. Although it is slightly damp in spite of everything.’ Lennart cups his hands and pushes his nose between his thumbs, takes a deep breath. He frowns, draws back, then pushes his nose in once more. He seems confused. He holds out his hands to Olof. ‘Smell this.’
Olof does as he asks, and he too is puzzled, has to check again. He can’t be sure, but the earth seems to smell of something different.
‘You used to slaughter calves,’ Lennart says. ‘So I thought you might be in a better position.’
Olof nods. ‘I think you’re right.’
‘Blood?’
‘Blood.’
Lennart lets the earth fall between his fingers, brushing his hands together to get rid of a few stubborn crumbs. ‘Well, at least that solves the question of nutrients.’
*
Molly carries on drawing, while Isabelle sits opposite her leafing through an old copy of a TV magazine. There is a double-page spread of paparazzi shots of female celebs’ bottoms in varying degrees of enlargement, showing their cellulite and lumps and bumps without the benefit of airbrushing. Admittedly Isabelle’s skin has lost some of its elasticity over the years, but she has a long way to go before she is sporting a baboon’s arse like the ones glowing out at her from the magazine.
But then again…Who’s boarding a luxury yacht or sunning themselves on a Florida beach, and who’s sitting in a run-down caravan without even so much as a plain fucking biscuit to eat? How did it come to this?
The answer is simple. It is sitting opposite Isabelle, wagging its curly blond head from side to side as it determinedly drags a black felt-tip across a piece of paper.
Suddenly Molly looks up. ‘Mummy, is it possible to live without skin?’
‘Sorry?’
‘If you take away a person’s skin, would they still be able to live?’
‘Why are you asking me that?’
‘I was just wondering. If you used like a potato peeler…’
‘Stop it.’
Molly shrugs and returns to her drawing.
Sometimes it seems to Isabelle that her daughter is a complete stranger, while at other times they have a mutual understanding so powerful that it is almost like telepathy, which can be frightening. At some point while she was looking at the paparazzi shots an image from Martyrs had flickered through Isabelle’s mind. The final scene. The flayed skin. Could it be a coincidence that Molly asked such a strange question just seconds later?
Occasionally Isabelle thinks it could have something to do with what happened in the Brunkeberg tunnel. But Molly was only two years old, and doesn’t remember anything. Or so she says.
At the time the family was living on the fourth floor of an apartment block on Birger Jarlsgatan in Stockholm. Peter had been away for three days at a training camp, and was due to be away for three more. Isabelle spent her time meeting friends for coffee at Saturnus, lunching at Sturehof, and sucking up praise for her adorable daughter wherever she went.
She was perfectly capable of making Molly look pretty for outings in the three-wheel buggy, playing the role of the smart, proud, inner-city mummy, as long as she had a clear picture of what was expected of her. She did the same as everyone else, with her own added flair.
In the evenings, back in the apartment, the panic took over. Xanor helped, but only temporarily. Molly had a tendency to temper tantrums, kicking and lashing out at everything in sight, screaming for no reason, and Isabelle struggled to push away the images of herself hurling her daughter against the wall or stuffing her into the washing machine.
She was stuck in someone else’s life, a life she was incapable of living, and everything around her was either false or meaningless. She hated the existence into which she had gradually slipped, bit by bit, and she hated herself because she had been so weak, believing that a child could alleviate her loneliness.
Because she had always been lonely. At fabulous parties where the champagne flowed and she was the centre of attention for every man in the room; in converted loft apartments and king-sized beds as she screwed her way around, searching for someone or something to free her from the feeling that her skin was a barrier against all living things.
A child had seemed like the obvious answer, and that was how she had felt during her pregnancy. But as soon as Molly was born, the separation had begun, and her daughter was just another person. On top of that, she constantly demanded
Isabelle’s attention without giving very much in return. A mistake.
Worst of all were the times when Molly was asleep and Isabelle simply wandered around the apartment. She could stand in the middle of the living room floor for half an hour staring at the print of Guernica while fear tore her guts to shreds.
At half past nine on one such evening, Molly woke up and was inconsolable. By that stage Isabelle felt so bad that the child’s screams were a relief, a concrete manifestation of her own internal bellow of pain. She picked Molly up and carried her around, humming a lullaby between gritted teeth. Nothing helped.
As they passed the stove for the fifth time, and the pile of newspapers waiting to be recycled, Isabelle wondered whether to light all four rings, throw the newspapers on top, then hurl herself out of the window with Molly in her arms, just like Jonatan in The Brothers Lionheart. A beautiful death. The idea was so appealing that she had to bang her head against the refrigerator door a couple of times to get rid of it.
Only one thing helped in a situation like this. Isabelle dressed her screaming, struggling daughter, grabbed the buggy and took the lift down to the street as Molly’s despairing cries echoed through the stairwell.
‘Shut the fuck up,’ Isabelle hissed. ‘Can’t you just shut your fucking mouth?’
Outside, Isabelle shoved Molly into the buggy and set off along Birger Jarlsgatan. It was early September, and darkness had fallen. The lights of Stureplan up ahead were tempting, but Isabelle would rather be French-kissed by a pig than turn up with her daughter in her present state.
She passed the Zita cinema, where people turned to stare at the screaming bundle. Isabelle bent her head and increased her speed. People, people everywhere, with their accusing, disparaging looks. In order to escape from them she turned into Tunnelgatan and carried on towards the Brunkeberg tunnel, which seemed to be deserted for once.
At first she felt a sense of liberation as she set off alone through the well-lit tunnel. The movement of her feet, the tapering perspective, the straight route ahead of her. But Molly was throwing herself back and forth in the buggy, her amplified screams bouncing off the walls, and soon it was worse than ever.
I Am Behind You Page 9