Some Kind of Peace: A Novel

by Camilla Grebe

  I go down to the subway with a gnawing feeling that something horrible has happened this evening, and that I, in some way, am an accessory to it.

  The next morning I arrive at the practice earlier than usual. The clump in my stomach has been replaced by nervous energy—I have to find out where Marianne is.

  Aina meets me in the corridor with a broad smile.

  “I don’t want to know,” I say, shaking my head.

  “Are you sore?”

  Aina looks surprised and hurt.

  “Is Marianne here yet?”

  “No. It’s really strange—she hasn’t come in and she hasn’t called. It’s not like her to just… just not show up.”

  I tell her about yesterday evening, and Aina’s eyes open wide as they do when she is worried or scared. The corner of her eye twitches a little as she slowly takes hold of my arm.

  “Have you called the police?”

  “No, she’d only been gone half an hour or so.”

  “Why didn’t you call Markus, or Christer?”

  There is something accusatory in her voice.

  “I don’t have Christer’s number. I don’t even know his last name. I called Markus, but I couldn’t get hold of him—or you.”

  “Oh.” Aina blushes slightly and lets go of my arm.

  “As I said, I don’t want to know. I’m much too worried about Marianne to hear about your escapades.”

  My voice is unnecessarily harsh. I know it’s petty of me, but sometimes I just can’t indulge Aina in the quick adventures she lives for. It’s as if I wanted her to promise me that she will share my solitude.

  “At the reception desk,” Aina interrupts my train of thought.

  “Reception desk?”

  “The binder with emergency contact numbers. Don’t you remember?” I remember. Marianne, who had attended a class on the role of the secretary in crisis management, had collected names and numbers of our closest relatives “in case something happens.”

  I go around the reception desk and start searching among Marianne’s neatly arranged, color-coded binders. Farthest down in a slender binder marked IMPORTANT PAPERS I find the sheet of numbers. By Marianne’s name, Christer and both sons are listed as relatives. I take the phone and dial Christer’s number. He answers at the first ring.

  • • •

  We are sitting in the cafeteria near the large foyer at South Hospital. An unending stream of people come and go around us. Nursing staff dressed in white walk with rapid, self-assured steps toward the counter, serve themselves the daily special, and continue to the cash register. Worried relatives sit in silence with a cup of coffee, looking straight ahead in a daze. Talkative senior citizens seem to have experienced the high point of the week with their hospital visit. An older woman carefully feeds a man who sits shaking in a wheelchair. My guess is that it is her husband who suffers from Parkinson’s.

  Christer sits across from me. His eyes are red rimmed and it is apparent that he hasn’t gotten much sleep. He constantly rubs his hands together. I notice that the cuticles on his thumb and index finger are torn apart far down and that an ugly, inflamed red color is starting to spread there.

  “A hit-and-run accident?”

  I hear doubt in my voice.

  “A hit-and-run accident,” Christer confirms. “The police are quite certain. There are witnesses, too.”

  “What happened? I mean, I spoke with Marianne yesterday evening. She wanted me to stop by, but she wasn’t there when I arrived.”

  “They think she ran down to pick something up at the 7-Eleven. She was there right before the accident. A bunch of kids who were sitting nearby eating cinnamon rolls saw her. She was just going back home, you know. Took a shortcut across Odengatan. There was a red light, and she had no reflectors on. I think she found that sort of thing was… unnecessary.”

  Christer interrupts himself and I can see the tears well up in his eyes again.

  “A car came, probably driving too fast, and didn’t have a chance to stop. Not a chance.”

  Christer shakes his head and starts working on the cuticle of his middle finger, slowly pulling away a long piece of skin so that the flesh is exposed. He doesn’t seem to feel the pain.

  “There were witnesses,” he repeats. “They saw that she flew through the air. Several… several yards, they say.”

  He sounds strangely practical and collected, but I have met people in shock before and know that he probably still can’t fully grasp the consequences of what has happened. Near us, the man with Parkinson’s starts weeping loudly. His wife looks around apologetically, gets up, and starts pushing his wheelchair. They quickly disappear through the exit.

  “And yes, the car kept going. Maybe it was someone who was drunk, or didn’t have a driver’s license, or who just got scared. But he ran away. No one was able to get the license plate number.”

  “So how is Marianne doing?”

  “She has head injuries. They gave her, what’s it called, an MRI. Apparently they didn’t see any bleeding, but the brain is swollen. That’s why she’s still unconscious.”

  “So she’s going to be all right?”

  “It’s more serious than it sounds. They have to reduce the swelling. If they don’t, she may have lasting brain injuries, or, in the worst case, die. I’ve been up with her. She’s lying there like she’s tied up, with tubes and IVs and all kinds of contraptions.”

  Christer sighs and his eyes begin to shine again.

  “I should have been there. I should have gone shopping for her. I don’t get why she suddenly had to go out in the darkness and… without reflectors. She didn’t have any reflectors. I was at a business dinner. I was sitting there having scallops in wine sauce, then the police called me on my cell phone. It’s too terrible. I was eating scallops, did I say that? In wine sauce. And she… she…”

  Christer clenches his jaws and I can’t help but take his hand. Squeeze it lightly.

  “I am so sorry,” I murmur.

  “I’m glad you came.” Christer looks up at me. “Thank you, Siri,” he whispers, squeezing my hand back.

  I pull myself together and try to find the right words without seeming intrusive.

  “Do you know what Marianne wanted to talk about with me?”

  Christer turns to me, and his red-rimmed eyes wander as if he can’t understand this irrelevant question.

  “No idea. Does it still matter now?”

  I shake my head slowly and lightly squeeze his hand again.

  “No, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

  Sometimes I think about my last days with Stefan. The spring of 2005 was difficult. A splinter of uncertainty had wedged its way into our relationship, an insight that chafed at me. The unpredictability of life? Maybe that was the problem. My body had regained its normal boyish shape. The slight swelling of my belly, so well concealed to everyone except Stefan and me, was gone. I was empty again.

  We had moved into the cottage on Värmdö. Maybe that could be our project now. A substitute for the child that never came. In the beginning everything was fine. We worked on the renovation together from morning to evening. We could be silent for days on end, lost in deep concentration, and forget mealtimes as we worked, two sweaty bodies, side by side. There were only brief exchanges:

  “Do you have the level?”

  Then silence.

  Then Stefan started to become increasingly passive. I think he took the loss of the child harder than I did. He withdrew from me and others more and more. His daily runs got longer and longer.

  “It can’t be good for your body to run five miles every day,” I said to him, but he didn’t answer.

  He withdrew into himself and would not let me or anyone else in. At work, he seemed to function well, but more and more often he came home exhausted and went straight from the door to bed, where he then lay awake with eyes shut tight until I came to lie down beside him. I crept up behind him, closer, always closer, and fell asleep tormented by the feeling I had dese
rted him, because I knew he couldn’t sleep.

  Morning. Stefan continued to lie quietly with his eyes shut tight, but I knew he was awake. My hand sought his—he pulled back. My cheek searched for the soft support that was his shoulder—no comfort.

  “Stefan, how are you, really?”

  “Fine.”

  “Really…?”

  “It’s okay. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I know it’s not okay. You’re not sleeping like you should, you’re losing weight, and you’ve gotten… completely… so damn… passive. You sit on that couch for days on end. It’s like living with a dead person.”

  Looking down at our newly sanded floor, Stefan only shrugged. I saw no sign of emotion in his face that could have given me some clue as to what he felt or thought. His gaze was expressionless and directed at the wall behind me.

  “I think you’re depressed. I mean, it’s not so strange, is it, after what we’ve been through? I see that kind of thing every day, and you must, too, in your job? I really think you have to do something about this, for your sake and for mine, but… mostly for our sake. It doesn’t feel as though we can… talk to each other anymore. I could give you the name of a good therapist, or you can talk to a colleague about getting some antidepressants prescribed. I don’t know—”

  “Shut up!”

  Stefan interrupted me with a shout. He suddenly jumped out of bed and I could see spit spraying from his mouth as he continued.

  “I hate it when you analyze me. I don’t need to see a damn psychologist or take any happy pills. The only thing I need is to be left alone. Can you get that through your overanalyzing little psychologist brain? I need a break from you and your damn concern. Your cloying curiosity and your worry. Leave. Me. Alone.”

  I glimpsed a type of madness in Stefan’s face, I couldn’t recognize him, but the feeling was gone as quickly as it came.

  “You know nothing about my problems, nothing. First this thing with the child… and then my job.”

  “Your job?”

  I couldn’t understand a thing. Stefan had always loved his work.

  “I see patients with spinal cord damage every day. And I’m the one who has to tell them they’re never going to walk again. I’m the one who has to talk to their loved ones, explain to the girlfriend that they will never be able to have a normal sex life again, never have children in a normal way, explain how the catheter functions, talk about physical therapy.”

  “But Stefan, why didn’t you say anything—”

  “Shut up. Leave me alone. I want you to leave me alone. I want to wake up one morning without being judged by your searching gaze, without hearing the concern in your voice. I want to wake up without you!”

  Stefan sank down on the floor in front of me, like a rag doll or a deflated balloon. He remained sitting on the rug in a peculiar position that resembled one of Aina’s yoga poses, with his forehead pressing against the floor. I could see his shoulders shaking in the semidarkness. Carefully, I sat down beside him and took his hand. It was cold and damp.

  “Stefan, do you realize you’re sick?”

  He didn’t answer, just shook, producing strange noises that sounded like drawn-out sobs, like crying in slow motion.

  “Stefan. You have to get help. This is like any other illness.”

  He nodded slowly between sobs.

  “Do you want the number of one of my colleagues?”

  “Noooo!” The word sounded like a howl, and suddenly I was afraid. Afraid of my inability to help him, of my shortcomings, and of the unpredictability of life.

  “Promise me you’ll get medication?”

  He nodded. “I promise.”

  • • •

  I remember that summer with painful acuity. It’s as if every aroma, every nuance, and every incident had etched itself in my memory and left an impression I will always carry with me. Like an insight that will not leave me alone. An understanding of my own boundless imperfection.

  Stefan procured himself some medication. I saw it on the bathroom shelf. Citalopram. He took it obediently and even just a few weeks later I thought I could sense an improvement. Finally he could sleep, read his mail, get the newspaper, go grocery shopping, and take initiative.

  Was he fully restored?

  Hardly.

  • • •

  In June I was really, really happy for the first time in months. Stefan seemed better and Aina and I had opened the practice together with Sven. The summer was stunningly beautiful. Outside our window, the dog roses blended with the giant leaves of the morning glory. The wild jasmine was in bloom, enveloping the house in an overpowering, slightly stifling aroma. The evenings on the rocks were long and light blue. Even the summer darkness seemed welcoming and friendly.

  Stefan had started diving again. Maybe it was logical that it would happen when he was diving. Maybe he would have wanted it that way, if he could have chosen?

  I remember that the morning was lovely, calm, and slightly chilly. We had breakfast on the wooden steps outside the cottage, like we always did, my bare feet on his. Silence. No worries yet. I drank from his coffee cup as usual, and we had hardtack with caviar paste. Out on the sea, a sailboat was trying to cross eastward, in vain. Stefan commented that the sailors would have to use their engines today if they didn’t want to get stuck there, bobbing in the flat sea.

  The day’s diving trip was to Vindö, Abborrkroken. I had dived there myself, a massive rock wall that descended 150 feet or more straight down into the water.

  I read the culture section of the newspaper while Stefan packed his equipment in the car and got ready. A quick kiss, and a wave from the car as he drove off. Maybe I am remembering wrong, but he looked happier than he had in a long time.

  I spent the day working. We were in the process of hiring a receptionist and I had to read all the applications carefully, because I am hopelessly particular in such matters. Time passed so quickly that I forgot to have lunch and noticed with surprise that it was starting to get dark when I heard a car drive up behind the cottage.

  I put on my red clogs and went out into the cool summer evening to meet Stefan. But there, in the twilight under the pines, stood Peppe and another man I had never seen before. They stood motionless next to the clothesline that ran between the shed and the small bent pine we had christened “the gnarly one.” They looked so funny, like monuments, that I almost laughed. I smiled as I walked up to greet them but stopped when I saw Peppe’s eyes. That’s when I understood.

  To this day, no one knows exactly what happened to Stefan. He was found at a depth of over fifty yards. The technical investigation showed that his equipment was in perfect shape. He had plenty of air left, and the autopsy did not indicate any physical problems that might explain the sudden accident. His death remains a mystery. Sure, everyone has theories: fear, lack of fear, contempt for death, death wish, lack of practice, carelessness as a result of long experience and routine, loss of orientation in the darkness, suicide, murder, mysterious illnesses and cramps, just to name a few. I didn’t want to think about how it happened; it was hard enough to be confronted with that it happened.

  The first month after his death, Stefan was with me every night. If I listened carefully I could hear his breathing. Sometimes I sensed his body beside mine as I drifted in and out of half sleep. In the morning, the room was filled with his scent. When four weeks had passed, he left me for good.

  This, I cannot forgive.

  Markus is sitting silently across from me with a teacup resting in his large hand. Around us, the restaurant is empty; the lunch rush ebbed out long ago.

  We are at the Blå Porten restaurant. Markus had suggested we meet here because he had an earlier errand on Djurgården. I feel inexplicably foreign in this part of the city, marked by its strange mixture of rich Stockholmers, the cultural elite, and tourists. In the courtyard outside the window, green garden furniture is stacked up along the walls and the rain falling to the ground forms small, muddy
rivers that slowly but surely flood the stone-paved courtyard. There is not a person in sight.

  “So, I wanted to talk to you about a few things.”

  Markus takes a small black notebook out of his pocket.

  “We checked your calls that evening when the police caught you for…” He doesn’t say the word but instead looks embarrassed, pauses, and flips the pages in his notebook.

  “Someone called you fifteen minutes before you were stopped, but the call came from a prepaid cell phone and we can’t trace it to a user.”

  “But then you must believe me, right?”

  Markus doesn’t reply but nods slowly and takes something out of the black backpack that I remember from our previous meetings.

  “Sure, I believe you. It’s obviously the same person who killed Sara, wrote to Charlotte, and sent the photo to you. But… the problem for you is that none of this matters when a DUI is involved. There was no doubt that you were driving while intoxicated. Whether or not anyone lured you into taking the car.”

  Markus is still looking down at his papers as he says this. As if he wants to spare me the humiliation. As if that would suffice.

  “You know, that really doesn’t matter. Just… just so long as you believe me. And that Aina and Sven believe me.”

  My voice is no longer composed. It gets shrill and much too loud, and a couple of old ladies who have just walked in look worriedly in our direction. I bury my head in my hands and feel the tears burning behind my eyelids.

  “I’m sorry. I just don’t know if I can take this any longer. I’m starting to believe you were right.”

  “Right about what?”

  “About this… crazy… guy. Right that he really is after me.”

  “Of course he is.”

  Markus takes my hand and looks at me steadily with his pale blue eyes, without being bothered by my breakdown. No longer embarrassed, he is present and empathetic to the highest degree. I am reminded of the fact that I like people who dare to be physical—men who dare to be physical.