“I was going to cut the grass but I haven’t got the energy in this heat,” says Gabriel. “There’s coffee in the machine if you want some.”
When I come back with my coffee and a sandwich he passes me a section of the newspaper. I open it but can’t be bothered to read anything, instead I watch Gabriel, who is half hidden behind his section, he’s wearing a T-shirt today as well, I stare at his sunburnt arms. He puts the paper down on the table, quickly looks up at me, I meet his eyes and smile, he smiles back, glances distractedly at the recipe of the day on the back page, smoked mackerel with some kind of cold sauce. Then he pushes the newspaper away.
“So … what about going for a swim?”
“Sure … but where?”
He shrugs his shoulders.
“Wherever you like. There’s a lake, it’s about ten minutes’ walk from here. Or we could drive to the sea. It’s not very far.”
“The sea sounds fantastic.”
He gets to his feet.
“I’ll go and get some towels.”
All the plants in the garden have been affected by the heat. The orange nasturtiums are hanging their heads and looking limp. There’s a water shortage, you’re not really supposed to water the garden, but Stella does the rounds with her big watering can every evening anyway. She has taught me that you shouldn’t water during the day, because the water evaporates straightaway, before it’s had a chance to get beyond the surface, and it does no good. I’d still like to give the weary nasturtiums a good shower.
When I look closer I can see that the undersides of the leaves are covered in aphids, great black clumps of them, they are on the stems bearing the flower heads too, covering them completely so that the stems look thick and black, uneven. The more I look, the more aphids I see. In the end I almost believe they’re multiplying before my very eyes, that the clumps on the underside of the leaves are slowly swelling, expanding. I turn away in disgust.
Gabriel hands me a towel.
“There’s blackfly on the nasturtiums,” I say.
“Happens every year.”
The car is as hot as a sauna. The sun has been shining on the seats and they burn my thighs through my skirt, it smells of hot plastic, stuffy. When Gabriel turns the key, nothing happens. He tries several times, but the car refuses to start.
“What the fuck?” he mumbles crossly.
After at least fifteen attempts he gives up, leaves the keys dangling in the ignition and leans back in his seat with a resigned expression.
“Shall we walk to the lake instead?” I say.
He looks at me, gazes at me for several seconds, but doesn’t reply. I look him straight in the eye, I haven’t thought about the color of his eyes before, it’s difficult to tell what it is. I hear him take a deep breath, then he leans over, places a hand behind my head, pulls me firmly toward him and kisses me. His kiss is also firm, he nearly forces my lips apart, hungrily, and I allow him to do it, I let his tongue into my mouth, he tastes of coffee and he smells good this time too, the same smell as when I wiped the paint off his forehead. I put my arms around him. He is breathing heavily now, I feel his hand through the fabric of my dress, feel it move across my back and I shudder with pleasure, press myself closer to him. Then he stops himself, places a hand on his forehead, looks almost tormented. His face is shiny, it must be 100 degrees in the car, 110, maybe more.
“We …” he begins, but breaks off.
He opens the door and gets out, running his hand through his hair.
“I’ll call Anders and see if he’s got time to come and take a look at the car.”
“Okay,” I say.
Gabriel is halfway up the path now, walking quickly. I open my door and realize my legs are shaking as I put my feet on the gravel next to the car. He stops and turns around.
“It’s not difficult to find your way to the lake if you want a swim,” he says. “You just follow the gravel road, then there’s a path through the forest on the right, maybe five minutes away. You can’t miss it.”
“Okay,” I say again.
Gabriel disappears into the house. I take my towel and set off toward the road.
It’s a small lake, the trees around it are tall and straight and the water looks black from a distance, but it’s actually yellowish and quite warm. There’s a little sandy beach, but the sand gives way beneath my feet and I can tell there is mud underneath, a thin layer of pale sand on top of thick black mud. Perhaps that’s what quicksand feels like, I think, and I am afraid to stand in the same spot for too long, afraid that the ground will give way beneath my feet, trapping me, dragging me down. There isn’t a soul in sight, everything is still and silent apart from a bird repeating its long, drawn-out scream, I wonder what it might be, a black-throated diver perhaps, I’m really bad at recognizing bird calls. It sounds horrible. I’m sure there must be crayfish in the lake, I can see them in my mind’s eye, their black shapes crawling along the bottom, big clumps of them, like the blackfly.
We learned to swim quite late, Stella and I. Somehow it seemed to me that I would never need to know how to do it, and I think Stella felt the same way. Every holiday when we were little we went to some cottage by the sea, to sandy Swedish beaches shelving gently into the water, saltspray roses in full bloom, stranded jellyfish, coarse gray-green grass and the sand at the water’s edge, solid and compacted, sometimes etched with grooves from the waves in a way that seemed too good to be true, unnatural, as if someone had raked the entire shoreline just like the gravel path outside the church where we had our end-of-semester celebrations. We would sit on the sand right at the water’s edge, where the water is at its warmest, we would walk around with our hands on the bottom, like crocodiles in tepid water, we would play ball and jump in the waves, but I never remember us swimming, I don’t remember Stella swimming even though she was so much older than me. Swimming lessons in school were one long torment, everyone else had already learned to swim during the summer holidays and I ended up paddling around clumsily with a float around my waist, like two great big external orange lungs on my back. I hated the pungent smell of chlorine, and the swimming pool was ugly, I could feel it very clearly even if I was unable to put it into words at the time: water was not my element. I learned to swim eventually, the last in the class and very reluctantly, but I still don’t enjoy it. I don’t know how Stella feels, we haven’t talked about it for years.
It is with a mixture of fear and pleasure that I close my eyes and sink beneath the surface of the water. I have that same strong feeling now, that I don’t belong in the water, but I think that perhaps it can be changed, perhaps I can become someone else. Perhaps it’s already happening. Even though the water is warm, almost too warm, it feels cool against my face. I think about Gabriel’s kiss, his firm hand behind my head, on the back of my neck. When I open my eyes underwater my hands look white in the yellowness, my nail polish looks orange, it looks grubby, dirty. I lie on my back instead, feeling my hair float out across the water around my face. A few black alder cones are bobbing on the surface of the water a short distance away, and a dragonfly darts just above, its movements jerky.
I could drown and die here and nobody would notice, I think to myself, they would have to drag the lake for my body, they would find it down in the mud. I wonder if there are eels here, eels are scavengers, they eat people who have drowned. I daren’t push my feet too far down for fear of touching something disgusting on the bottom, down there where the water is chilly. The alders are standing in a row on the shoreline, the sand has been washed away from around their roots, they are black and slippery, like black snakes reaching down into the water, I hurry out, suddenly convinced that the yellow water smells fetid. I jump as one of my wet curls tickles my shoulder, tumbling down my back, I quickly wrap the towel around my head, trapping them. The alders are reflected in the surface of the water, standing dark and silent in a row along the shoreline, there isn’t a sound.
I don’t have a change of clothes with me, and have to pull on my dress
over my wet swimsuit. Do they usually come here to swim? I wonder. Stella and Gabriel. Does he pull her toward him in the same way, forcing her lips apart, pressing himself against her? You could do anything here, no one would see. What would we have done if he had come with me? The thought excites me, his hands on my body, warm against my skin, which is covered in gooseflesh after my swim, one hand fastened around my wrist in a firm grip, the other hand under my dress, touching my thigh. I close my eyes. I would let him do anything he wants, I think, and am instantly surprised by my own thought, but yes, I think it again. Anything he wants, anything at all.
Stella and Gabriel are standing next to Gabriel’s car when I get back, I recognize the neighbor Anders, who is leaning over the engine, looking concerned. Gabriel is wearing the same expression. Anders nods to me as I pass by.
“There’s something wrong with the engine,” says Stella.
“Oh right, that’s not good.”
Gabriel doesn’t look at me. Stella follows me into the house.
“Was the water warm?” she wonders.
“It sure was.”
“It usually is, it’s so shallow.”
“Do you know if there are any crayfish?”
“What?”
“In the lake.”
“Oh … no, I don’t think so.”
“What about eels?”
Stella smiles.
“I don’t know, ask Gabriel. Are you thinking of going fishing?”
“No, I just wondered.”
We eat in silence, it’s late, it’s growing dark outside. Stella has lit the paraffin lamp on the veranda. Gabriel has barbecued some meat, fillet of beef, it’s red in the center and has been cooked in one piece, lying there on the barbecue like a long, thick sausage. I am having difficulty eating it. They haven’t sorted out the car, someone is coming to pick it up tomorrow to take it to a repair shop.
“The water lilies should be flowering now,” says Stella. “Did you see them?”
It’s a few seconds before I realize she’s talking to me.
“Oh, in the lake?”
“Yes, in the lake.”
She sounds annoyed and makes no attempt to hide it. She was complaining about a headache earlier, and about the heat. I know she’s worried about the car too, that it will be expensive, that things are going to be difficult while it’s being fixed. If Gabriel can’t get around she will have to give him lifts, and she’s the one who will have to do all the shopping and so on until it’s back.
“No … I didn’t see any water lilies.”
“Maybe you just didn’t notice them.”
“I would have.”
“Maybe you just didn’t notice them,” she repeats.
“There were no water lilies.”
“There must have been. There are lots of them. Nymphaea alba. Oh, by the way—do you know if there are any crayfish in the lake?”
She turns to Gabriel.
“Not that I know of.”
I think of the water lilies, of their roots down on the bottom of the lake, sunk in the mud, sending their shoots up toward the surface like distress flares. It must be unpleasant to swim among water lilies, their stems around your legs, winding around your calves and thighs. Water lily roots and eels, that’s what is at the bottom of the lake. I poke at my meat, I can’t eat any more.
“No good?”
Gabriel looks at me for the first time the entire evening.
“Oh, yes … it’s just that I have a bit of a problem with red meat, that’s all.”
• • •
The thunderstorm does not come, it is still just as hot when I go to bed. My window is ajar, fixed with the catch, I would really like to open it wider but I don’t feel all that safe, since I’m on the ground floor. Someone could get in, or something—an animal. It might not make any difference if I opened the window anyway, the air is still, it hangs heavy and dead, just as sultry as it was this afternoon, the only difference is that it’s darker now.
I am just falling asleep when I hear noises from upstairs. Long, drawn-out sobs, I recognize them. Stella is crying, heartrending weeping, I can hear her gasping for breath, in my mind’s eye I can see her whole body shaking. Then I hear the muted sound of Gabriel’s voice, I can’t hear what he’s saying but from his tone it’s obvious that he’s angry but is controlling himself, then Stella’s voice, a note of accusation. I pull the covers over my head, try not to listen. When I close my eyes beneath the covers my thoughts race back and forth inside my head, replaying the kiss in the car over and over again. I did nothing to encourage him, I think. I only looked at him, he was the one who kissed me. He shouldn’t have done it, I shouldn’t have let him, I should have pushed him away. Immediately the thought of his hand gripping my wrist is there again. Imagine if I had tried to push him away and he had stopped me, locking my hand with his, pushing himself against me, holding on to me. I wouldn’t have been able to do anything to stop him. I try to push away the thought but it forces its way back, in the end I almost believe that’s what really happened, it’s like in the mornings sometimes when I’m really tired and instead of getting up I imagine I’m doing it, I lie there half asleep and imagine so vividly that I’m getting up and going into the bathroom that I’m surprised when I do wake up and realize I’m still lying in bed.
I must have fallen asleep properly then because I am woken by a scream, shrill and long drawn-out. My first thought is that it’s Stella. That he has told her, that he felt bad, had to confess. I feel empty inside as I imagine hearing her footsteps on the stairs at any moment, what will she say to me? Or yell at me? I hear my own voice inside my head: “I didn’t want to say anything to you, but he held me so I couldn’t move, I couldn’t do anything, he held my hands so I couldn’t move and he kissed me.” I’m good at lying, good at hitting the right tone of voice, good at convincing myself that what I’m saying is actually true, that’s why it sounds so natural when I say it. It is almost true now. “I didn’t know what was happening until he kissed me.”
Then I realize the sound I’ve heard didn’t come from upstairs but from outside, from the garden. I think it must be a cat, Nils is out at night and there are other cats around here, cats that don’t belong to anyone, cats that have been left behind by summer visitors or cats from some of the farms in the area. They hunt at night, there are plenty of mice here, the house is old, and then there are all the crops, ripe yellow fields in all directions, and the old barns where the grain is stored. In my mind’s eye I can see the mouse shrieking, it’s one of the tiny ones that live under the house, I’ve seen one, little dark eyes like peppercorns, I can see it in the clutches of a cat, fighting for its life, screaming, twisting and turning, its heart beating in a panic as the cat sinks its teeth into the small body.
I switch on the bedside lamp and several moths that have been attracted by the light begin to dance around it as I pad across the white-painted wooden floor and close the window, drawing the thin curtains. I can hear a different sound now, muffled at first but quickly growing louder, sighs and whimpers, I quickly get back into bed, turn off the light. It isn’t a cat this time, it’s coming from upstairs again and I realize it’s Stella, it’s hard to work out if she is experiencing pain or pleasure, it’s just on the borderline. I try to imagine what Gabriel is doing to her to make her sound like that, how he is touching her; the sounds she is making grow louder, faster. I close my eyes, thinking of his hands on the nape of my neck, the violence of his kiss, his hands moving across my back, his breathing heavy and aroused, his hand sliding down across my bottom and my thighs, finding its way under my dress as the other hand closes around my wrist. I imagine the weight of his body on mine, imagine that I am the one he is kissing now, that he is pressing his body hard against mine, that those whimpering noises are mine.
The bus into town takes a different route this time, following narrow, winding roads past farms and whitewashed churches and little groups of houses where all the mailboxes are arranged in a
long row by the roadside. No one gets on and no one gets off anywhere and it feels as if it is taking an eternity, it’s hot and there’s an unpleasant, stuffy smell on the bus. I make patterns with my fingertips in the upholstery, I draw a heart, rub it out, draw another one.
Stella looks annoyed when I get off.
“You’re very late.”
“The bus took this weird detour.”
She looks at her watch.
“I have to be back at one fifteen, we’ve got a meeting.”
We go to the same café as last time, Stella orders a Caesar salad with a mineral water, I have the same. The waitress gives a little smile when I say I’d like the same, glancing quickly from one to the other, I presume she thinks we’re alike. Once when I was at junior high and Stella was at high school, a man in a department store asked if we were twins. I thought it was really funny, but Stella seemed annoyed more than anything when she explained that she was much older. She’s always looked young, she still does, you could still take us for the same age if it weren’t for her clothes, they’re much more elegant than mine these days, they look more grown-up.
“It’s good here,” Stella says when the waitress returns with our salads. “Considering it’s in a small town.”
She smiles, perhaps with a hint of resignation. I know she misses Stockholm, she was much happier there than I have ever been, but she couldn’t find a job. She was thinking of setting up her own business, helping rich people to design their gardens, but there’s not much work available. You need contacts and she doesn’t have any, no acquaintances who happen to know the acquaintances of the rich, or acquaintances of parents who might need to employ a garden designer.
“Was Gabriel awake when you left?”
“I didn’t see him.”
She sighs, pushes her sunglasses up onto her head, and leans closer to me across the table.
“I’ve been thinking about Erik lately,” she says.
It’s been such a long time since she mentioned Erik that I can’t help looking surprised when she mentions his name, and she looks down, as if she thinks it sounded bad coming out of her mouth, as if she suspects that’s what’s going through my mind.
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