Drowned

by Therese Bohman

  Gabriel opens the door of one of the closets and takes out a dress. It is black and embroidered with small beads, it has thin shoulder straps, it looks expensive. When I see the label on the back I realize it must have been, it says Prada. I look at him.

  “What’s that?”

  “I bought it for Stella when we were in Italy.”

  “It’s gorgeous.”

  “You should try it on.”

  “What?”

  I feel as if my brain is working very slowly. Gabriel smiles at me, pulls down the zipper at the side of the dress.

  “You’d look so lovely in it. With your hair exactly like that. It’s such a pity to have it hanging there practically unworn.”

  He holds out the dress to me, smiles, nods toward the folding screen next to the closet. It’s old, it wasn’t Gabriel’s grandparents who bought it but some relative long ago, it’s made of wood, with a glossy black lacquer finish, patterns of Asiatic fish with fins like veils, billowing aquatic plants in gold and green. I look at the fish as I get changed, it almost seems as if they are moving, winking at me, I think of the carp in the pond in the greenhouse, their slow movements under the water, I carefully pull on the dress. It is lined with soft silk, it slips easily over my body, it feels cool. It’s almost like diving, I think, like being enveloped by water. I can see myself in the mirror on the wall. It really is a beautiful dress, the most expensive thing I’ve ever had on, and it fits perfectly, I must have lost weight. Stella was always slightly slimmer than me, a little shorter and thinner, her clothes were always half a size too small when I wanted to borrow them, nothing ever fitted quite right. My lips are darker than usual, from the wine, I moisten them, smile tentatively at my reflection.

  Gabriel is sitting on the bed, I hear him take a deep breath as I step out from behind the screen.

  “Come here,” he says quietly and I obey, crossing the bedroom floor until I am standing in front of him and he touches the fabric of the dress, gently runs his hand over my thigh, looks up at me.

  “You are so beautiful,” he murmurs.

  His hand is on my thigh again, he draws me a little closer, parts his legs so that I am standing between them, he strokes the back of my thigh and slides his hand upward, I close my eyes, breathing more heavily. He is touching me with both hands now, outside the fabric, then suddenly inside, I gasp as I feel his hands on my skin, softly caressing my thighs, then all at once they are groping toward the back, up beneath the dress, more determined now.

  He puts his hands around my waist, I bend down and he puts them around the back of my neck instead, pulling my head toward his, he kisses me and I part my lips, his mouth tastes of wine. I gently draw my nails down the nape of his neck, under the collar of his shirt and he groans, pulls me down onto the bed, on my back. He lies on top of me and carries on kissing me, he touches my hair, gathers it into a bunch, winds it around his hand, he grips my wrist with the other hand, the way he did in the greenhouse last summer, the way he did a few days ago when he was looking at my nail polish, his grip is just as firm now and he is still kissing me, pulling my head back and then letting go of my hair, running his hand the length of my body instead, over my breasts and my waist, over my thighs, then under my skirt again. I groan, press myself against him, his hands are inside my panties now, he moans as he feels how wet I am.

  “Oh my God,” he murmurs, both surprised and aroused, as if he doesn’t believe it’s true, he has to feel again, feel more, I press myself against his hand and he moves it back and forth, I whimper, cling to him, my hands inside his shirt now, I drag my nails down his back and he groans even more loudly, moves his hand faster between my legs, I have stopped thinking, I am conscious of nothing but his hand. I fumble for the button of his jeans, I find it but can’t get it undone, he lets go of my wrist to help.

  “Get on all fours,” he says quietly and when I don’t obey immediately he says it again, more sharply this time, I do as he says and he is behind me, touching me outside the dress at first and then inside, he pushes it up, pulls my panties to one side.

  Gabriel has started packing, he lets me use his computer during the day. He’s out a lot, getting things sorted, he’s got a lot of stuff to get rid of. He takes several carloads to the dump, and boxes and boxes to a charity, they organize flea markets in the summer, he takes all of Stella’s things there, books and records and magazines. He says he never really managed to sort out his grandparents’ things when he moved into the house, he just pushed it all into boxes and stored it in the toolshed in the garden, which was already full of boxes they had put there. Now he unpacks them all and goes through the contents, sorting everything out, it keeps him busy for several days. He packs most of it to be given away, but finds a few things he wants to hold on to, he comes to show me when he finds something he likes, he looks happy, as if he has discovered a treasure: old china figurines, books, a box full of poetry by authors I’ve never heard of, Gabriel waves several of the collections at me triumphantly, tells me they are first editions, they are valuable. He’s going to take them with him to Stockholm, he says, and packs them into a different box, he’s going to take a lot of books even though he says he’s taking only the most essential, there are huge gaps on the bookshelves in the living room now.

  “How’s it going?” he says, sneaking a look at the computer screen, I scroll down the page, I don’t want him to read it.

  “Oh, not too bad,” I mumble. “I’ve written a few pages.”

  He stands behind me, gently stroking my hair, his expression preoccupied as he gazes out across the fields. Twilight is falling, the sun sets early and the wind has got up over the past few days, the clouds are torn to shreds, ragged pink-and-orange clouds glowing on the horizon against the background of the dark sky before the sun disappears completely. Gabriel has bought some hyacinths, two of them are on the balcony and are half out, one pink and one purple, there is already a faint scent in the air.

  “It’s cold in your room, isn’t it?” he says.

  I look up at him.

  “Yes.”

  “There’s more of a draft downstairs,” he says. “The windows are older.”

  He looks at me, seems to be searching for the right words.

  “I’ve been thinking … you can sleep up here with me if you want. I mean, it’s so windy at the moment, it’s stupid for you to lie there freezing at night.”

  I don’t know what to say, I merely nod in response, but at bedtime I take my duvet and pillow upstairs, make up the bed with my sheets on Stella’s side and crawl in, waiting for Gabriel to come to bed, beneath the shadows cast on the ceiling by the apple trees in the garden.

  It is Gabriel’s turn to choose a record as we sit in the living room the following evening. He has several crates of vinyl LPs, but he says he has sold at least as many, he regrets it now but he needed the money to pay his rent one summer, it was when he was a student and had just moved to Stockholm. He picks out an album and passes the sleeve to me, I look at it distractedly. The living room smells of hyacinths too now, there are hyacinths on virtually every windowsill, filling the entire house with their perfume. My head feels woolly, it’s felt like that for several days now, I just push things out of my mind; this is the result of not finishing my assignment, of dropped points and the threat of my student loan being withdrawn, it’s too hard, I just avoid thinking about it. This morning I looked up Rossetti’s The Annunciation in one of the art books I have with me, his Mary doesn’t look afraid at all, the way I remembered her. She looks as if her mind is somewhere else, she looks determined, as if she is convincing herself that what is taking place in front of her isn’t really happening. I think we are very much alike, Mary and Marina.

  We are drinking tea, Gabriel has laid out a proper little tea party: scones and small jars of jelly, he seems elated, he talks about how good he thinks it will be to get away from here for a while. He doesn’t even know if he wants to come back for the summer anymore, he says, he’s wondering ab
out renting out the house, going abroad instead, staying somewhere for a long time and doing some writing.

  “Sweden is too small for me,” he says with a laugh.

  I make an effort to smile in response.

  “You can come and visit me, of course!” he says.

  “Where will you go?” I say, I can hear how thin my voice sounds. He doesn’t appear to notice.

  “To France, probably. Or Italy, I’ve hardly spent any time in Italy … except when … well, except when I was there with Stella. Have you?”

  I shake my head.

  “I’ve hardly been anywhere.”

  I had gotten used to the idea that Gabriel would be living in Stockholm, I’d started to like it, to like the thought that he would be there when I needed someone who understood, without my having to explain and defend everything. I’ve even thought about sleeping with him in Stockholm too, but now that evening back in the summer feels much too close again, the evening after he had kissed me for the first time and it seemed to me that it was all a game to him. Perhaps it still is. And it still isn’t a game to me, however much I might want it to be, I knew that the very first night I lay next to him in bed, when he had fallen asleep and I was lying there listening to his breathing and I felt safe, for the first time in an eternity. It has never been a game to me.

  I have to blink away the tears, I can’t keep crying all the time, over everything, crying is all I have done these past few months, I have cried until I was sick, or until I fell asleep through sheer exhaustion, my body weary and heavy, shaking, feverish. I have to stop crying at some point.

  I pick at a tattered price ticket on the record sleeve, look at the photo of the band on the back. The lighting is dramatic, they all have spiky hair and jackets with huge shoulder pads, they look deadly serious, even now after twenty years, even though I should think most people who see this picture will be laughing at them now.

  “What did you look like in the eighties?” I ask Gabriel, changing the subject.

  He laughs, he doesn’t seem to have noticed that his comments about moving abroad have upset me.

  “Oh, I was young and handsome in the eighties. And I wore some terrific jackets.”

  “And did you have a terrific hairstyle?”

  “There was nothing wrong with my hairstyle.”

  He smiles.

  “I’ve got some photos somewhere … if I can find them. And if you’re interested?”

  “Sure.”

  He gets up and pulls out several drawers in the large bureau in the living room before he finds what he’s looking for: a pile of large black photo albums. He flicks through them to sort out the chronology, then hands me the one he has decided is the earliest.

  “That must be eighty-two, eighty-three, something like that,” he says, sitting down beside me on the sofa again, looking over my shoulder as I open the album and smile at a very young Gabriel in a striped jacket and narrow black trousers. There are pictures from a party at the beginning, Gabriel says it was when he first moved to Stockholm and started studying. In one of the pictures he has his arm around the shoulders of a blonde girl with a lot of black makeup around her eyes, in another he is kissing her. On the next page they are standing in a square in what looks like southern Europe, the buildings in the background are beautiful but shabby, the facades flaking, the palm trees casting long shadows across the cobbles in the square, Gabriel is screwing up his eyes at the camera and the blonde girl is wearing big, dark sunglasses.

  “That was in Spain,” says Gabriel. “Her name was Åsa.”

  In the next album Gabriel’s hair is a little longer and he is dressed almost entirely in black, he sits smoking at café tables, some in Stockholm, some in Copenhagen, Paris, Rome, he did a lot of traveling at one time he tells me, sometimes with a friend but usually alone, one album later it’s ’88, ’89, Gabriel has moved to Paris, he’s wearing a white shirt and a black jacket, his hair is even longer, he’s usually unshaven and there is a beautiful young woman next to him in many of the pictures. She has long dark hair, straight and shiny, dark eyes, a coat that is tightly belted around her waist, it has a big fur collar, she is smiling at the camera in almost every picture.

  “That’s Adèle,” says Gabriel, and I nod.

  “She’s very beautiful.”

  “Yes. She is.”

  He gets up again, goes over to one of the windows and seems to be looking out, even though it’s too dark outside for him to be able to see anything but his own reflection. He places the palms of his hands on the windowsill and sighs.

  “It must be ten years since I last looked at those pictures.”

  I turn the pages, they’re having a picnic now, it’s summer. Adèle is sitting on a blanket and smiling at the camera, she’s wearing a striped vest top and a white skirt. Then there are several party pictures, Gabriel with a cardboard fez on his head and a glass in his hand, grinning, Adèle sitting cross-legged on an Oriental rug.

  “Are you okay?” I say.

  Gabriel shakes his head over by the window.

  “I don’t know. It just feels like such a long time ago. I feel … old, I guess.”

  He turns and gives me a wan smile.

  “I think I’ll have another cup of tea,” he says. “Would you like one?”

  “Yes please.”

  He disappears into the kitchen with our teacups as I carry on looking through the album: Adèle’s birthday, she is laughing and blowing out the candles on a cake, I try to count them and I make it twenty-two, Gabriel and Adèle on a balcony, she’s in a toweling robe and there is a plate of toast in front of her, Gabriel and Adèle on a jetty, it looks as if it’s somewhere in the Swedish archipelago, birch trees in the background, Gabriel has rolled up his jeans and is unshaven, he looks tired in the bright light, suddenly significantly older than in the pictures in the early albums. Then Adèle getting ready to go out somewhere, trying on shoes in front of a full-length mirror, she is wearing thick eyeliner and a black dress, I peer at the picture. The dress has narrow shoulder straps, it ends just above the knee, it looks expensive. I know that it is lined with soft silk, that it is embroidered with tiny black beads even though you can’t see them in the photograph, I know it feels cool against your body when you slip it on, I know that the fabric is thin but falls beautifully thanks to the weight of the beads.

  I swallow. Gabriel places a steaming cup of tea on the table in front of me, I jump, quickly turn the page, but change my mind and turn back.

  “This …” I say, I realize as soon as I begin to speak that I have no idea what to say. “This is the dress.”

  I point at the picture of Adèle, Gabriel frowns, looks at me inquiringly.

  “The one you had in the closet? The one you said you’d bought for Stella?”

  I look at him searchingly, his face is expressionless.

  “The one you told me to put on … you remember?” I say faintly, but he shows no indication of understanding what I’m talking about. He puts his teacup down next to mine.

  “It’s not the same dress,” he says.

  I point to the photograph again.

  “But it is, I can see that.”

  I’m convinced that I’m right now, my voice is stronger.

  “Why did you say you’d bought it for Stella?”

  “It’s not the same dress,” Gabriel says again, he looks a little annoyed now, but mostly tired, weary. “It’s very similar, you’re right there. But it’s not the same.”

  I get up from the sofa.

  “I’ll go and get it, then we can compare.”

  He shakes his head.

  “Sit down, Marina,” he says. “I don’t even have it anymore.”

  “What?”

  “I took it to the charity place with the rest of Stella’s things.”

  “But why?”

  He shrugs his shoulders.

  “Did you want it?”

  “What are you up to?”

  He looks at me, he really doesn’t
seem to understand what I’m talking about. He’s a good liar, I think, maybe even better than me, but then he is a writer, that’s his job.

  Gabriel hums along to the music, looks at me.

  “Don’t you want your tea?”

  I shake my head.

  “And you don’t want my company either?”

  I feel revolted, almost nauseous.

  “No,” I mumble, I am already halfway to the kitchen, leaving him sitting by the table in the living room.

  But when he comes upstairs later and gets into bed I have to cuddle up to him once more, I went to bed before him, I lay and read for a while, thinking that I would fall asleep before he came up, and if I hadn’t fallen asleep I would pretend I had, I would sleep with my back to him. But then I smell him and my stomach contracts, the scent of vanilla, and I have to move closer, lay my cheek against his chest and feel the calmness spreading through my whole body as I listen to the beating of his heart. He tips my face back and kisses me gently and then I begin to cry, and he wipes away my tears and puts his arms around me and I want him to kiss me again, so he does, more hungrily this time, he kisses my cheeks too and his lips taste of salt and I cling to him.

  “I don’t want you to go and live in a different country,” I whisper. “I want to be with you.”

  I am still crying, he strokes my hair, it feels like the evening I arrived, that very first evening on the sofa when he consoled me and I fell asleep with my head on his chest.

  “Of course we’ll be together,” Gabriel murmurs. His hand has slid down over my hair and down my back, down to my thigh, he is stroking it in a way which is both soft and firm at the same time, up and down, slipping under my nightdress. I am aroused by his touch even though I am still crying, my head suddenly feels tender, feverish, I hold him tightly. Secrets bind people together, I think, perhaps he has also realized that now, that guilt is like a tie, that we are joined together now, his kisses taste more strongly of salt and suddenly I can barely remember why I am crying anymore, I am aware of nothing but his hand against my thigh, of course we’ll be together, I think, who else would we be with.