I bend down to say hello to the dog, its breath is warm against my hand, but it doesn’t want to be petted.
“I was sorry to hear about your sister.”
He sounds kind, and he looks kind. I don’t know what to say. He almost seems to regret having said anything, he is looking at me anxiously as if he’s afraid I might start crying.
I straighten up.
“I’m here to sort out some of her things,” I say.
“Not an easy job.”
“No, it’s very hard.”
“You’re very welcome to come over one day,” says Anders. “You and Gabriel. Perhaps you could come over for coffee?”
I nod.
“Thank you … that would be nice.”
“Give him my best.”
“I will. Your tree is lovely, by the way.”
He looks inquiringly at me.
“The apple tree … the one with the Christmas lights. We can see it from the upstairs window.”
“Oh, that. Thanks.”
He gives me a brief nod before setting off along the road. The dog dances and skips around his legs, gives a little yap at a bird in the wild rose bushes, it seems to be in a good mood.
I have trouble getting to sleep that night. It’s windy again, it’s always windy in the fall according to Gabriel, there’s nothing to stop the wind whistling across the fields. It comes all the way from the sea, the sea I haven’t yet seen except from far away when I was at the palace with Stella, glittering blue between the trees and bushes, the smell of salt and seaweed. I would like to go to the sea, I like being there in the fall, standing on a shore and gazing out across the endless expanse of gray, standing exactly on the waterline with Wellington boots on and letting the waves break over my feet if it’s a calm day and the waves are small. It’s a familiar scene, and yet I’m not sure it’s a memory. When was I by the sea in the fall? On a sandy shore? I suddenly remember a visit to some friends of my parents when I was younger, perhaps only nine or ten years old. Stella was there too, it was a Saturday and she was furious because she had to come with us, she wanted to go into town with her girlfriends. I always imagined them trying on clothes, all three in the same cubicle, great piles of tops and jeans and skirts, giggling away and staying in there for ages, they were probably unbearable, but unbearable in a way I would have wanted to be too, along with them. It was fall, perhaps November like now, and our parents’ friends lived by the sea, not right by the sea, but close enough to be able to see it from the upstairs windows of the old wooden house. We were having lunch, elk steaks, and Stella saw an opportunity to make a fuss about that too, she had no intention of eating elk, no way. The husband in the family used to hunt and I can remember the furrow on my mother’s brow as she stared at Stella, that look clearly telling her not to start.
We went down to the sea after we’d eaten, Stella and I. She went on and on about the business of the elk, a poor innocent animal, she wanted me to agree with her, which I probably did even though I thought the elk steak was delicious. We had blackcurrant jelly with it, we never got that at home. There were rocks, low gray rocks sloping gently into the water and Stella went right down to the waterline, where the rocks were slippery and black with algae, as if she wanted to tease me, make me tell her to come away, not to go so near the edge, so that she could get cross with me too and snap at me, telling me I wasn’t her mother. It had happened before and I didn’t want it to happen again, not that afternoon, I wanted to be on Stella’s side, so I said nothing even though I was so terrified that she would slip and fall into the water that I didn’t dare take my eyes off her, not for a second.
I wake up shivering, just as I do every morning, even though I have started sleeping with an extra blanket on top of the duvet. I wrap myself in the blanket as I pad across the hall floor and into the downstairs bathroom, take a long shower, the bathroom mirror is misted over and I draw a line with my forefinger. I think about when I was little, when it was winter and Stella and I were waiting in the backseat of the car for Mom and Dad, who had gone off to do some shopping or something, and the windows got all misted up on the inside and we drew flowers and animals and hearts, and Stella wrote the names of the boys she was in love with. Dad used to tell us to try not to breathe until he had closed the car door and we would laugh and try, timing each other to see how long we could hold our breath, Stella always won.
It was an accident, the police said, she was probably just testing out the temperature of the water. Maybe she slipped, banged her head. She was wearing her dress but was barefoot, perhaps she was just going to paddle in the shallow water where the rocks began, in the same spot where we went swimming in the summer, they sloped gently for quite a long way out into the water, you could walk on the smooth stone surface until the water came up to your thighs. Then it suddenly fell away steeply, and you had to start swimming. Was she surprised when the rock suddenly disappeared beneath her feet? Did she hit her head on the big rock just below the surface of the water? Not hard enough to cause a wound, but enough to make her dizzy, perhaps lose consciousness for a little while? Long enough to sink beneath the surface, it is deep where the rock falls away, the water is instantly colder. It doesn’t matter how good you are at holding your breath if you’re unconscious. The thought keeps on coming back, over and over again, was she conscious when she died? Did the colder water farther down make her come around, it must have been dark down there, perhaps it was difficult to work out which direction the light was coming from, which direction she ought to swim in? Did she try to swim? Even though she was running out of air? Did she have time to think anything?
I place the palm of my hand against the bathroom mirror, a blurred image of my face appears through the mist. I think about what Gabriel said on one of those first evenings back in the summer, that we weren’t really alike, Stella and I. Not in appearance perhaps, I think. But we were both equally bad at swimming.
Gabriel is in town, he’s gone to speak to his accountant and then he’s going to do some shopping. He sounded surprised yesterday when I said I didn’t want to go with him, but it’s nice to have the house to myself. I have my breakfast in the living room while watching TV, drink my coffee in front of some stupid talk show, Gabriel hardly ever watches TV. Then I take two satsumas and another cup of coffee upstairs, walking carefully so that I won’t spill any. It’s warm at the desk on the balcony, even though it’s so late in the fall. Presumably the balcony is better insulated than my bedroom, it’s completely draft proof with chubby little radiators under some of the windows. Gabriel has made sure it’s possible to work there all year round, although he has said he moves the computer into the bedroom if it gets too cold outside, it’s so expensive to keep the balcony heated when that happens. But this is a long, mild fall, almost fifty degrees outside during the day and no frost at night, just gray air full of dampness.
I open my assignment on Gabriel’s computer, it’s only a few pages long. I scroll distractedly through the text thinking that it’s bad, it’s a bad choice of subject, it seems confused and slapdash and I’ve taken out books at random, I don’t really know anything about existing research. I should have gone and looked up a few old newspaper articles—that always looks conscientious, or maybe just searched for books a little more carefully, this is never going to get me a pass. My tutor is nice but absentminded, there’s no point in asking her for advice, she just keeps saying it all sounds very exciting. Perhaps I ought to ask Gabriel, but I don’t like to bother him, and I’m afraid he’ll be disappointed because I haven’t worked harder. He got a book in the mail that he has to review and he’s busy trying to find somewhere to live, an apartment he can borrow or rent. He’s spent a lot of time on the phone, calling old friends, I hope he’ll end up moving to Stockholm, that we’ll be living in the same city.
I yawn, take a gulp of coffee out of the blue-and-white cup I have brought upstairs with me, type a sentence and immediately delete it. Outside the window everything is gray, I watch Ni
ls moving slowly across the lawn, keeping his eye on the birds in the bushes. Leaves are whirling around him, wet and dark, the wind is much stronger now, the balcony windows are rattling. It always blows in the same direction here, off the sea and in across the fields, you can tell by the trees; they all bend slightly in toward the land, pointing east, like broken compass needles.
It is drizzling as I walk along the road across the field, I am wearing Stella’s Wellington boots again. I would feel silly carrying an umbrella out here in the country, and my umbrella probably wouldn’t have been much use anyway, it’s cheap and flimsy, it turns inside out at the least gust of wind. Instead I have pulled Stella’s dark-blue raincoat over my jacket and drawn the hood tight around my face. Inside it I feel cut off from the world, I can hardly see anything at the sides, and every sound is muted, as if I were underwater.
There is a tree in the graveled area in front of Anders and Karin’s house, a chestnut, and I have to crouch down beneath it, breathing in the sweet scent and searching among the yellowish-brown fallen leaves, wet and slimy from the rain. Most of the chestnuts are losing their sheen and are damaged, chipped or cracked, but I find a spiky sphere that is still intact, covered in brown marks but undamaged, and I break open the tough shell until it gives way, peeling apart with perfect resistance, exposing a dark, shiny chestnut nestling in the soft white padding. I pick it out and slip it into my pocket, closing my hand around it; silky and cold and almost greasy against my palm, it feels good.
Anders opens the door almost immediately when I ring the bell. He’s wearing a pair of scruffy jeans, spattered with both oil and paint, and a checked shirt. He looks pleased but surprised.
“Hey, look who’s here!” he says.
“I just thought I’d …” I begin, but he interrupts me, shouts “Karin!,” looks at me and nods.
“Good to see you,” he says. “Come on in.”
A woman appears in the hallway, she looks as if she’s just over sixty, she’s also wearing jeans, she looks youthful, well-cut shoulder-length hair without even a hint of gray. Perhaps she colors it, but she doesn’t look the vain type. Maybe she’s one of those naturally beautiful women I always envy; my hair is nondescript and mousy, so I color it a darker shade, I have to use an eyebrow pencil and mascara every day to stop me from feeling as if I’m disappearing. Maybe she doesn’t even think about her hair, that’s usually the case.
“ ‘Look at the state of you,” she says to Anders, nodding at his jeans, he gives an embarrassed smile.
“I wasn’t expecting a visitor.”
“I guess this is our neighbor,” she says with a smile, shaking my outstretched hand energetically, and I start to explain again that I’m here because Anders invited me when I met him on the road, that’s why I’m ringing their doorbell, but she doesn’t seem to be listening, nor does she seem to think there’s anything odd about the fact that I’m here. She takes my raincoat and puts it on a hanger over the bath, says that this is an unusual fall, so much rain and so mild.
“So where’s the poet today?” says Anders.
I smile.
“He’s at home working, he’s got quite a bit on at the moment.”
“Is it his new book?”
“No, that’s finished. This is a review.”
“Oh, so he does that kind of thing as well?”
“I’ll make some coffee,” says Karin.
We are sitting in a living room on the ground floor having our coffee, it’s a small, cluttered room full of stuff: little tables with lamps and ornaments, big vases of dried flowers on the floor, plates and paintings and photographs on every wall and small crocheted mats all over the place, it looks older than Anders and Karin and I think maybe they inherited this house, along with the crocheted mats and everything else.
They talk mostly about the weather, about the area and about their dog, his name is Sture, apparently, after a dog in a children’s book. He is lying at one end of the sofa on some cushions, he seems listless, barely reacting when I pat his head to say hello, I’ve never really known how to behave with dogs.
Anders and Karin have two children, a son and a daughter, their pictures are on the walls, from when they were christened and confirmed and when they graduated and got married. They’ve both moved to Stockholm, Karin tells me, but they come to visit at Christmas and Easter and sometimes for a few weeks in the summer, with their partners and children and dogs.
“Things get pretty lively around here then,” says Anders, looking happy, I smile, thinking that I ought to visit my parents more often.
“They were here this summer,” says Karin. “Although I don’t think you were here then. They usually come at the beginning of July.”
“No, I was here later,” I murmur.
“Of course, that was before …” Karin says without finishing the sentence, but I can still hear the end in my head, “before Stella died,” “before your sister drowned,” “before it happened,” it has become a fixed point in their frame of reference when it comes to time. Not much happens here, it’s obvious that something like that will become significant, something everyone knows about and talks about, it was in the paper, it was front-page news.
“So how’s he doing?” Anders says.
“Gabriel? Okay, I think.”
Both Anders and Karin look concerned.
“So you’re quite happy living there?” says Karin.
I don’t understand what she means, but I mumble a yes and both she and Anders nod, relieved, and I suddenly realize it’s not Gabriel they’re worried about, it’s me, and the fact that I’m living there with him. What do they really think of him? I wonder, then it occurs to me that perhaps they don’t just think something, they know something, I suddenly feel sick, the coffee tastes sour. I want to ask a question but I don’t know how to put it, Karin nods at me, encouraging me to take another cookie, there are several different kinds on the plate, all homemade: raspberry jelly, pearl sugar, chopped almonds, and I take one, chewing mechanically as Anders begins to talk about someone in the neighborhood whose cellar has been damaged by the rain, I look out of the window, twilight is already falling.
“It looks as if it’s going to be Stockholm,” Gabriel says that evening as we are sitting in the living room. This has become a habit now, like those evenings on the patio in the summer. Gabriel has made mulled wine, the first of the year. He seems delighted, he has even put out little bowls of raisins and almonds. The cat is fast asleep on the old wing chair, Gabriel has lit a fire in the tiled stove and we are sitting side by side on the sofa, close together.
“There’s an apartment in the Söder area, it looks as if I’ll be able to rent it for a year anyway.”
He looks at me, smiling when he sees how pleased I am.
“For real?” I say, he laughs.
“For real. From the middle of December, so I’d better make a start on packing and sorting stuff out pretty soon.”
I lean my head against his shoulder, feeling a great sense of relief spreading through my entire body, I close my eyes, I see myself visiting him, in an apartment in Stockholm. I wonder what he will take with him, whether he will take any books and if so which ones, whether the place is furnished or he will need his own furniture. In that case he would probably take the big old armchair in the living room, he sits in it when he’s reading. And the floor lamp that stands beside it, it’s from the thirties and has three shades made of pale-pink silk, like flowers, linnaea perhaps.
“I called in to see Anders and Karin,” I say to Gabriel.
He nods. “They’re nice people. Although we don’t really hang out with them.”
He stops himself.
“Didn’t … we didn’t hang out with them.”
He rests his forehead on his hand, he looks exhausted.
“Would you have wanted to come with me?”
“No, I’ve got so much to do here.”
He nods toward the book lying open on the table, a new edition of Rimbaud’s po
ems in translation, he seems to be utterly absorbed by it, he talked about it over dinner too. It’s been a long time since he wrote anything for the newspaper, although fall is high season for new publications. Stella used to nag him about making an effort to get more work, probably with some justification.
He reaches for the book.
“This really is incredibly good. Have you read Rimbaud?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“You should.”
He clears his throat, begins to read, his voice low but steady.
“On the calm black water where the stars are sleeping / White Ophelia floats like a great lily; / Floats very slowly, lying in her long veils. / In the far-off woods you can hear the call of the hunters.”
He carries on reading, he seems almost hypnotized. I put my mulled wine down on the table, feeling uncomfortable. Gabriel looks at me.
“Isn’t that beautiful?”
“No.”
“It’s such a lovely theme: beauty in death,” he says quietly. “And the madness, the fact that she wants more than there is in this world, that life is not enough for her … and therefore she has to go under.”
“There is nothing beautiful about death.”
He’s not listening.
“And the image of her when she’s drowned, like a lily floating on the water in her pale dress, like a water lily.”
I get up from the sofa.
“Where are you going?” he says.
“You’re crazy,” I mumble.
He looks surprised.
“Are we never going to talk about it?” I say. “Are we never going to talk about what we did to her and the fact that she’s dead now, are we going to pretend it never happened?”
“But …” he begins.
“I don’t understand how you can read that and just pretend nothing has happened.”
“I’m not pretending nothing has happened,” Gabriel says quietly.
“So how can you sit there and say it’s beautiful? Because you actually think it’s nice? The fact that she’s not here to nag you anymore, so you can avoid taking responsibility for anything and just sit around reading poetry and being an artist?”
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