“Would you like some more wine?”
“Yes please, if you’re having some.”
“Go and get yourself a clean glass then—I expect Stella has already put the other one in the dishwasher.”
I open the wrong cupboard doors in the kitchen twice before I find the wineglasses, there are several different ones, a few of each, and they all look old. Gabriel is just moving a speaker from the living room onto the veranda when I come back, he puts on a vinyl LP, which crackles as the needle lands on the surface of the record. I don’t recognize the song, but I do recognize David Bowie’s voice. Gabriel sits down beside me on the sofa and fills up my glass, I take a sip. It’s the same wine we had with dinner, but it seems to me that it tastes different now, rougher.
“So how do you like living in Stockholm?” Gabriel asks.
“Not much, to be honest.”
“Neither did I.”
“You used to live in Stockholm?”
“Indeed I did. For quite a long time.”
We talk about Stockholm for a while, and I tell him about the apartment I’m renting as a sublet, the very thought of it makes me feel slightly uncomfortable as I remember its particular level of oppressive stuffiness on sunny days. It’s actually a lovely apartment, full of details I like: huge marble windowsills, a beautiful parquet floor, a view over pine trees, pine trees that I have begun to think of as functionalist suburban pine trees. I like the fact that they look a certain way, slightly weary after a long life in a residential area, kind of dry and dusty. When the sun shines the apartment feels dusty too, as if the air is standing still, as if everything is immediately covered in a thin film of dust which the sun suddenly reveals, sometimes I think it’s hard to breathe, and I have to push all the windows wide open, go and stand outside on the balcony.
“You and Stella haven’t seen each other for quite a while, have you?” says Gabriel.
“Not since Christmas.”
He nods.
“Do you think it was stupid of her to move out here?”
“No, I mean she got a job here, so …”
A small smile plays around his lips.
“But I’m too old for her—isn’t that what everyone says?”
“No …” I mumble. “Not that I’ve heard.”
He changes the subject, much to my relief. Because I actually have heard people say that Gabriel is too old for Stella, I’ve heard my mother and father say it, and I’ve seen relatives raise their eyebrows, meaning exactly that. He’s at least forty-five, which means there must be fifteen years between them, maybe more. I remember when Stella first told our parents about him, it was at Easter two years ago, we were eating at the dining table in the living room, daffodils on the table and lots of food, we’d been working together in the kitchen all day, Mom and Stella and I. Easter was early that year, and outside everything was cold and gray. The memory has wrapped itself around the Easter celebrations like an unpleasant membrane, I thought about it last Easter too, felt the atmosphere around the table was stiff even though Stella wasn’t there, or maybe that was the reason why. She hadn’t known Gabriel for very long when she told us about him, in fact she had just finished with Erik, her former boyfriend, he was supposed to have been joining us for Easter, it had all been arranged ages ago. My mother and father couldn’t understand Stella at all when she said she was no longer in love with Erik, that particular line of reasoning didn’t work with them. They said he was always so kind to her, they talked about the apartment, the fantastic condo he’d bought, Stella had only just moved in. Stella said again that she was no longer in love with him, that she hadn’t been for quite some time. My mother asked what Stella was intending to do about all the practicalities: where was she going to live, how was she going to support herself? Stella screamed at her, that hadn’t happened for ages, not since Stella was living at home. When Mom started to cry, Stella left the table. I still hate thinking about it.
“You’re not really alike,” says Gabriel. “You and Stella.”
“She’s more like Mom. Both in her appearance and in her ways.”
“And you’re like your dad?”
“Yes, or our grandmother when she was young … and our aunts.”
Gabriel looks as if he’s about to say something, but changes his mind. Instead he tops off my glass.
“So what is it you do in Stockholm?” he asks. “What are you studying?”
“The history of art.”
“And you’ve got an assignment to do? What’s it about?”
I shrug my shoulders.
“I’m not really sure yet, but something to do with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, I think. The literary themes in his paintings, perhaps. But I haven’t quite decided.”
He nods, smiles at me.
“Good choice.”
I smile back.
“What else?” he says. “Job?”
“No.”
“Boyfriend?”
“Yes.”
He nods again, smiling as if he’s expecting me to tell him more.
“His name is Peter …” I begin. Gabriel is still smiling, and so am I, although I do feel slightly embarrassed at the same time, it’s the expression on his face, it’s hard to read his reaction to the simplest facts.
“Didn’t he want to come with you?” says Gabriel.
I shake my head.
“No, he’s in Spain at the moment. With some friends.”
“I see.”
I like the way he says that, making a simple statement, as if he understands exactly what is behind the information that Peter is on holiday without me, and there is no need for me to say any more on the subject.
The black cat appears on the veranda, Gabriel entices it over and pats the sofa with his hand. It jumps up and settles down, giving every appearance of falling asleep instantly. It’s called Nils, says Gabriel, it used to belong to his grandmother. Then he starts to tell me a complicated story about someone he used to study with in Stockholm who lived in the same part of the city as me, I’m laughing, we’re both laughing. Suddenly Stella is standing in the doorway with a cardigan over her nightdress.
“Could you turn the music down a little?” she says. “I need to get some sleep.”
Her tone of voice is pleasant, but I can sense an underlying irritation. Stella isn’t as good at hiding her feelings as she thinks she is, I realized that a long time ago. I wonder if Gabriel has realized it too.
“Of course,” he says. “Sorry, darling.”
I get up from the sofa.
“I think I’ll head off to bed as well,” I say.
“Lightweights,” Gabriel mutters, but with a smile. “In that case maybe I’ll try to work for a little while.”
When Stella calls I’m up, busy hanging my clothes in the closet in the spare room. I let the phone ring for some time before I realize that Gabriel is either asleep or working, and isn’t going to answer.
“That took a hell of a long time,” says Stella. She sounds stressed.
“I didn’t know whether to answer it or not.”
“Did you sleep well? It wasn’t too hot?”
“No, it was fine.”
“Do you still fancy coming into town this afternoon?”
“Yes, of course.”
She starts to give me instructions about what time the bus goes and where we are to meet, then she says she has to sort something out and brings the conversation to an abrupt end. I eat breakfast on the veranda while leafing through a copy of Dagens Nyheter that I’ve found in the kitchen, it’s thin and flimsy, as if there’s a shortage of news today. I wonder whether it was Gabriel or Stella who brought the newspaper in, whether Gabriel has already woken up and had breakfast and sat down at his desk on the glassed-in balcony to work, or whether he’s still asleep up there. The house is silent, it’s just as hot again today. It occurs to me that I ought to put on a dress instead of my jeans, but I’m so pale and I don’t want to show my legs yet. Stella has a perfect soft golden tan, s
he’s spent a lot of time outside this summer even though she hasn’t had any holiday yet. She’s been working outdoors, and has spent the weekends in the garden. She looked so fresh in her light summer clothes yesterday, she always looks fresh, even in her working clothes; she usually wears an old men’s shirt and jeans and puts her hair up, she looks like something from a fashion magazine even when she’s digging.
She works for the local council in the parks and gardens department, it’s her job to decide which flowers should be planted in which containers around the town, which shrubs in which beds, when and how the trees should be pruned, and where to put the Christmas lights in December. She is the youngest person ever to hold this post, and the first woman as well, my parents usually mention this with great pride whenever they are talking to anyone about her.
She is waiting for me at the bus depot next to the train station.
“God, it’s so hot,” is the first thing she says. “How can you stand wearing those?”
She nods in the direction of my jeans.
“I’m fine.”
“Shall we see if we can find you a skirt?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
I sigh, suddenly remembering how stubborn she can be, even though she doesn’t appear to notice it herself.
“I’ve brought a dress with me, I just didn’t want to wear it today, that’s all.”
She nods and seems to give in. We wander around the town center for a while, in silence at first, but then Stella starts to point out the planting she was responsible for this morning, showing me some concrete containers filled with lavender and some other purple flowers I don’t know the name of. She looks pleased when I say they look lovely. She stops outside a café.
“Shall we have a coffee?”
She looks at me.
“Sure.”
Stella chooses a table in the shade and asks the waitress for a mineral water and a coffee. I’m hungry, and when I realize Stella is paying I order a sandwich.
“Have you spoken to Gabriel today?” she wonders.
“No, I didn’t want to go upstairs in case I might be disturbing him.”
She nods, leans back in her chair, and pushes her sunglasses up onto her forehead, her pupils contracting even though we’re sitting in the shade. Our eyes are the same color, a grayish blue which is difficult to put a name to. Although we’re not particularly alike, I think our eyes are.
Stella clears her throat.
“So how are things with Peter?” she asks.
I don’t know if she’s asking how he is, or how things are between the two of us, but it doesn’t really matter because I don’t know anyway.
“I don’t know.”
She looks at me in surprise, almost annoyed, as if she hadn’t expected an honest answer.
“He’s in Spain with some friends.”
“Without you?”
I shrug my shoulders. I don’t want to talk about Peter, I’ve been thinking how nice it is that he’s barely crossed my mind since I came here. Stella seems to understand.
“I thought we could do some shopping before we go home,” she says instead. “Anything in particular you’d like for dinner?”
“Not really.”
“Gabriel does a wonderful grilled salmon, it’s absolutely delicious. He uses a secret marinade.”
She smiles, I nod.
“We could do some potatoes in a dill sauce to go with it,” she adds. “Dill grows like a weed in our garden, we could make enough dill sauce for everything.”
She picks up her bag, pulls down her sunglasses.
“Right then. Off we go.”
I’m alone in the house. Gabriel has gone into town with Stella to do some shopping and go to the bank. It’s almost eleven thirty when I wake up. I haven’t slept well even though I’ve slept late, in fact I haven’t slept well since I arrived. It’s an uneasy sleep, I wake up several times during the night, and in between I sleep so deeply that I feel disorientated when I do wake up. I think I start to dream as soon as I get into bed and close my eyes. The air in the room is bad, even though I keep the windows open all day and all evening; I think maybe there’s something in the walls, or in the foundations. Mold, something wrong.
The weather is still relentlessly beautiful. I take a long shower, even though Stella has asked me to be careful with the amount of water I use. The bathroom mirror is misty with condensation, I wipe it with the palm of my hand and contemplate my face. It looks somehow strange, as if my features are too round, too weak, as if they are in the process of disintegrating. Stella and I are different in that way, everything about her face is sharper, clearer, and I have always thought it makes her look more refined, more elegant, more intelligent. I stare at my mouth, thinking that my lips look swollen, fleshy, in a way that is vulgar, almost disgusting.
I take a stroll around the garden to dry my hair in the sun. It’s too hot for jeans now, the heat has forced me to put on the only dress I have with me, and I glance down at my legs, my feet in the grass. I look pale. This is the first time in ages I’ve gone barefoot. Bumblebees are buzzing among small flowers on the lawn, and I take great care not to step on any of them. Once, a long time ago, possibly on the last occasion when I walked barefoot on grass, I happened to step on a fallen apple with a wasp inside it. We were playing croquet in the garden at my parents’ house, it was when Stella was still with Erik, so it was Stella and Erik and me. Stella was winning when I stood on the wasp and we had to stop playing. I can still feel the stabbing pain in my foot at the memory, and I can hear Stella’s voice in my head, she kept on saying “It’s fine, it’s only a wasp sting,” but my foot swelled up and in the end I started to cry. At that point she gave up, and she and Erik drove me to primary care. The doctor said I was probably particularly sensitive to insect bites and stings.
I go indoors, wandering aimlessly through the living room and back out into the hallway, upstairs to the first floor, through Stella and Gabriel’s bedroom and onto the glassed-in balcony where Gabriel has his desk. It is old and made of dark wood, it looks heavy and is cluttered with books and piles of paper and several blue-and-white china cups with dried coffee dregs in the bottom. Balanced on a heap of old newspapers is an overfilled mosaic ashtray in shades of turquoise, with a brass dolphin leaping up from a foaming wave. It makes me smile, it’s just so kitsch. In a terra-cotta pot on the floor there’s an enormous angel’s trumpet, the flowers will be out soon, and the swollen buds look like big green pupae with something trying to force its way out. A number of postcards are pinned up on a pillar between two windows: Hokusai’s The Great Wave, a hollow-eyed Madonna by Munch, one of Rossetti’s red-haired women—Gabriel and I are equally taken with them. On the windowsill below lie several dead flies. It’s warm and damp like the inside of a greenhouse, little drops of water trickle slowly down the inside of the panes of glass.
Gabriel has left his computer on. A blue cube is spinning around on the screen, slowly changing into a sphere. I move the mouse a fraction to remove the screen saver, and a Word document appears. I glance over my shoulder, an instinctive movement to check that no one is watching me. Then I perch on the very edge of the chair, which looks as old as the desk, it’s an office chair with wheels and slats across the back and a seat made of dark-green leather held in place by small copper upholstery nails. Only two lines of text are visible on the screen, it looks like the end of a poem: “floats very slowly, lying in her long veils /—In the far-off woods you can hear the call of the hunters.” I don’t recognize the words and am about to scroll up the page when I hear the muffled sound of a car door closing. I stiffen for a moment, then get up so quickly that I almost tip over the chair, one of the arms hits me hard on the thigh, and I just have time to think that I’m going to have a bruise. I have to activate the screen saver again, I click on the desktop, properties, screen saver, what’s it called, the cube that turns into a sphere? I realize I’m not going to have time to apply it, I can already hear
the crunch of footsteps on the gravel path and I hurry through the bedroom and try to calm myself before setting off down the stairs. At that very moment the door opens and Gabriel steps into the hallway, his hands full of shopping bags, the bamboo curtain dancing merrily behind him. He looks at me.
“Hi there,” he says, sounding slightly surprised.
“Hi.”
I smile at him.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“I was looking for Nils.”
“He’s outside. I’ve just seen him in the flower bed at the front.”
I nod, he carries on looking at me, puts the bags down on the floor.
“How was town?” I say.
“Good, it was nice to see a few people. How are you—you look a bit pale?”
I raise my hand to my forehead in a pure reflex action.
“I’ve got a slight headache,” I say. “I think it’s the heat.”
I am tired of my pale body, which feels like Stockholm’s last hold on me, the proof that I have spent far too much time indoors instead of having fun. I have dragged one of the chairs from the patio onto the lawn, which is in sunlight all day. A bikini would be too embarrassing, I’m still too pale, I don’t want to show that much flesh. Wearing a pair of short shorts and a tank top feels sufficiently undressed, and after I have been sitting in the sun for a while I feel a little braver and pull up my top slightly, exposing my stomach to the sun. Behind me the last of the roses are flowering in the borders, along with lavender and Sweet William. A small currant bush is weighed down by the heavy bunches of shiny red berries, I have eaten a few, it must be just as long since I last ate them as when I last ate sugar snap peas, and yet the taste was completely familiar, as if it had been only yesterday. I like redcurrants even though they taste of little more than sourness, I like the consistency, the sensation of crushing a berry in my mouth, biting through the skin and feeling all the rough little seeds dispersing.
I fall asleep in the sun, when I wake up I look at my watch straightaway and realize I have slept for almost half an hour. The clouds that were in the sky when I sat down on the lawn have completely disappeared, and instead the sky is open and blue, everything I can see has a surreal sharpness. Even in the distance, on the horizon beyond the fields, the perspective does not blur land and sky into a pale-blue mist. It’s the same with the smells. Sharp, acrid, as if there is absolutely no resistance to them in the air. As soon as I wake I am aware of the clean, chemical smell of paint. It is obtrusive and cold, as if it wants to be inhaled, and I obey, avidly drawing it into my lungs. I have always liked those pungent aromas: the smell in the garage, gas and exhaust fumes, the smell of thick black felt-tip pens, turpentine, glue, it smells like Dad, I think to myself, and I suddenly realize that all my memories of smells like this are linked to him. We were painting my room together once, I must have been about twelve or thirteen, just between junior high and high school, I suddenly decided that everything in my room that I hadn’t chosen for myself was hopelessly childish. I wanted everything that was pink painted white, and Dad and I were going to do it together. I remember the tin of white paint, the strong smell filling the entire room, I remember lying down on the bed, closing my eyes and inhaling the acrid smell, feeling slightly dizzy as my cheeks grew warm, I almost felt drunk even though I didn’t realize it at the time. I remember thinking it probably wasn’t a good idea to breathe in the paint fumes, but I liked doing it anyway.
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