The Swede: A Novel

by Robert Karjel

  “Hot enough,” said Stackhouse.

  Friedman turned, her hand on the door handle, and Grip felt her gaze from the side.

  “Is the air-conditioning even on?” he asked.

  “He refuses to talk.” Stackhouse looked at the last ice cube, which spun on the bottom of his cup. Then he glanced up again, satisfied at having given the perfect response.

  “Brilliant,” said Grip. “His mind is frying. It’s unbearable in there.”

  “Not unbearable enough, apparently. All privileges are available to him, it’s a simple question of cooperation.” Stackhouse crumpled his paper cup and tossed it over the top of the desk. “There’s water in there. He can drink as much as he wants.”

  Grip looked at him and then turned to Friedman. “If you want me to cooperate at all, turn on the air-conditioning.” He opened the door and went out.

  Friedman lingered in the doorway. The door swung closed again, but it was too thin to block out her short “Damn it!”

  Afternoon. The sun had passed its zenith only an hour before, and the heat lay like a lid over the island. But he couldn’t sit and stare at his hotel room. Grip decided to go out for a run.

  Keeping his pace slow, he got to know the base through its streets and back roads. There was no risk getting lost: the main part of the island was barely more than half a mile wide. He ran past the harbor, located on the inner side of the atoll, saw a couple of ships docked there, a few gray-painted warships anchored farther out. Ten minutes to the south, he came to the airport. A path ran alongside it, a few hundred yards away. The air was filled with engine noise, but he saw no aircraft taking off or landing. Where the runway came to a stop, the road continued farther south. Here the vegetation was higher, but the trees still weren’t tall enough to cool him with their shadows. Humidity rose up from the greenery, making the air hard to breathe. Beside the paved trail were white patches of coral sand, and between branches he caught glimpses of the sea. But he couldn’t hear it, not with the airplane engines howling somewhere behind him. Then a passing convoy of trucks drowned out his impressions.

  Grip slowed down, walked for a minute. At the signs for ammunition stockpiles, he turned and started running again.

  New lines of trucks came from behind, belching out black diesel smoke. He glanced up at their flatbeds. They were loaded with bombs. Hundreds of them.

  What were they doing, the Americans? Were they planning to start a new war, or had they not yet ended the last one? What the hell were they doing, and what the hell was he getting himself into?

  CHAPTER 10

  GRIP IS FICKLE, AND GRIP likes art.” Little more was ever said when someone at work sized him up. Then they turned to the usual: punctual, loyal, and well dressed. Everything that said nothing. (If you wanted a security police assignment as bodyguard for the royal family or a government official, you had to look sharp.)

  The art, that was the easiest to handle. Asked during a coffee break what he’d done over the weekend, he could honestly answer that he’d been to a gallery. No one was really interested in that, not there. Occasionally a young lawyer in the hallway would ask who his favorite painter was, hoping he’d say Dalí or Matisse. These types loved to have their good taste confirmed. Grip always replied “Lucien Freud,” which drew a blank look—and then they changed the subject, which was the goal. Moreover, it wasn’t true. Freud was good, but his naked yellow-gray bodies made Grip think too often of Auschwitz.

  Not that he was ashamed of his taste, but it was simpler. Or rather, it was predictable: exactly what a policeman who suddenly takes an interest in art would fall for. Mainstream. Reproduced on posters you could buy at Åhléns department store and slap up over the couch. But Grip had liked Edward Hopper’s paintings as long as he could remember. Their names alone: Cape Cod Evening, Nighthawks, Early Sunday Morning—this was art for lonely people.

  The fickle part was harder. Some saw him as a hero. Grip and the women, world champion of one-week relationships and one-night stands. Two in a single night, a colleague’s estranged wife, many more. There were stories about him, one more outrageous than the next. The attic apartment he’d inherited on Norrmälarstrand, overlooking the Stockholm waterfront, didn’t hurt. At least, that was what he said when drinking a few beers with colleagues in the sauna.

  Grip had been hungry ever since the first youthful spots on his sheets. Wanting to try what others only fantasized about, finding his way to the fearless ones who laughed back, the ones who also wanted it. Games with new positions had started before the end of adolescence. Later: bruises, leather straps, and candles—anything that excited—on airplanes, in hotel elevators with the emergency stop button pushed. A grunting nocturnal animal, a machine of flesh and blood who wasn’t ashamed of himself.

  But he never found redemption. He came and came, without any sense of peace. The game went on for far too many years. The cursed hunger devoured him, demanded the next level or simply something different. A demon to be exorcised every time. In the end, he could only make love—or as he put it, knock off, clear himself—in complete darkness. He couldn’t bear to look at faces.

  Waking up together, that he could sometimes do. Sometimes. Sometimes even a relationship. But he could never stand the ones who wanted to share closeness in the morning light. He was like a vampire. The dark was made for that—after the final trembling, it was every man for himself. Some shared that need, could live like that for a while. But then he always hit the point where some triviality would start to irritate him beyond reason. They ate from the refrigerator without asking, or dug around too much in his cupboards and closets.

  For a while he dated a morning-TV host with big hair. She was young, had her own apartment, and never said a word about wanting it any other way. She liked the darkness and was as restless as he was; it worked. They showed up together in the tabloids—in the captions, he was “the policeman.” Her breath smelled like a warm orchard breeze, she hated wearing skirts, and she screamed into the phone whenever he made excuses for sometimes wanting to spend a week alone. On the way to bed, she would braid her hair in a split second. And at a couple of ambitious restaurants in upscale Kungsholmen, her drinks were always on the house. Then came the rumors about her and some theater actor with sleepy eyes. Grip was surprised that he didn’t care—he still thought he was getting what he needed. But when he saw all the empty white-wine bottles in her nightstand, and realized what the mints and apple scent were hiding, he’d had enough. Couldn’t tolerate that kind of weakness.

  That was a few years ago. Since then, most of his women had closed the door on him. Among his colleagues, a few stories hung around. Immortal feats, the prey in mink coats, the untamed Amazons, those far too young and far too old: “What about the one that . . .” A question to kill the boredom during a three a.m. stakeout. A colleague hoping for entertainment. Grip shrugged. None of them saw that the temple had collapsed, the tide had reversed.

  The change was spelled New York.

  It happened in the fall, but really it began in early August of the same year. A Belorussian lost his shit while being arrested in Stockholm and pushed a bookcase over onto Grip. It landed on him full force, dislocating his shoulder. The Belorussian was deported, shouting of excessive police violence, with two broken ribs and a black eye—but even though Grip had paid back, he was the one who needed surgery. A few titanium screws in his shoulder, and for that, he was out for ten weeks.

  When he came back, the security police’s own doctor—a moody type who ruled over his own arbitrary little kingdom of sickness and health—wasn’t happy with the number of hours Grip had put in on physical therapy and barbells. Without even asking him to take off his shirt, he took Grip out of action for another two months. There was no point arguing. Causing trouble could trigger the sudden mention of a heart murmur in your record, leading to years of examinations. Such was the power of the white coat.

  Another two months. Grip could stand it for about three days. He’d already
been stuck at home for ten weeks, hardly getting out except to the weight room at the gym. His shoulders and biceps grew while everything else in life stood still. The dead time burned in his head as soon as he woke up in the morning. He had to make a break, get away.

  One night he thumbed through his address book, made a call, and reminded someone of an old promise. She lived in Stockholm but also had an apartment in Brooklyn, on the outskirts of Williamsburg. No elevator, but brick walls and hardwood floors. Views over the balconies of Orthodox Jews, and to the west you could supposedly see part of Manhattan. “Feel free to borrow the place—any time.” Said on a whim once (they’d spent a handful of nights together; she also loved predictable art, Jirlow and Grünewald, and was married)—but still, on the phone she seemed to remember her promise better than she remembered Grip. At any rate, it was enough; she stood by her word. She still needed someone to let in the workmen—a renovation that had dragged on too long, she herself never had time to be there. There was a doorman to give him the keys. “Stay as long as you want.”

  Everything was ready with a phone call. Grip threw out his few potted plants, put a plastic basket under his mail slot in the door, bought a ticket via London, went underground.

  Williamsburg, New York. It started out predictably enough. Galleries and museums, and in between Grip searching for shops that sold the food he missed. Keeping up with his weights in a gym that overlooked barges on the East River. Letting in the workmen, who spent a few days replacing the old tiles in the bathroom with travertine and then disappeared again. He made a few attempts at the local bars. Halfhearted attempts, paying for drinks. No luck.

  How many personality tests had he taken for the security police over the years? A dozen, twenty, something like that. Pages filled with tricky timed questions, hypothetical moral dilemmas, boxes to tick, yes/no. We want to identify trends among our staff members. After a week of interviews, hired psychologists would summarize you in a ten-minute briefing. “I see that loneliness does not scare you. You seem to enjoy danger.” Yet never more than tiptoeing around the edges of who you really were. Had anyone been able to predict what would happen, who he’d become after his houseplants were thrown out? A security police officer on sick leave, between borrowed sheets in New York.

  Instead of all checkmarks and contrived statements, he should have shown them a picture. “There, that’s me,” he could have said, pointing to the smuggler at the back of the boat in Hopper’s The Bootleggers. Calm, blue-gray water in the foreground, a crude little wooden boat making its way along the coast. In the background, a character on shore watches the boat and the two men in it. “There I am.” The figure in the stern, with his back to the viewer. He’s right where he wants to be, but he doesn’t belong anywhere.

  What nobody could have predicted had occurred by chance. Or at least afterward, that’s the way it seemed. One coffee too many, perhaps, he was out on some errand one afternoon and needed to find a bathroom. The door was black with a pane of glass at eye level—a bar, just what he was looking for. He opened it, walked in. There were only a few customers. Nodded at the bartender when he passed the counter to avoid issues and looked for the bathroom, among unmarked doors in the gloom at the back. Did his thing, went out again. Then continued as before, back up the street.

  But that was when something caught up with him from the bar, an overwhelming feeling. His steps slowed. For a moment, for a few seconds, he felt like a child coming home to his bedroom after a trip. A sense of loss and familiarity at the same time. But he hadn’t seen anyone he recognized inside the bar. He’d simply noticed a hand patting someone else’s shoulder, and from a table at the side heard a low, sincere laugh. Grip passed a street sign, memorized the address. He returned a few days later after getting up the courage. A Friday night.

  There were a lot more people now, crowded, a haze of faces. The familiar tingle more intense in his body. “It’s the dark night of my soul . . .” Tracks of Depeche Mode lay like a carpet over the din. Suggestive guitars, French 1980s pop, “avec son sabre, attaque les cavaliers . . .” The air was sweet, the interior black. There was a suppressed restlessness. Everything floating. A state of preparation: short conversations, smiles, ice spun in half-full glasses. The bartender nodded, recognizing Grip. Two mouthfuls of whisky at a time; the skin on his back felt the slightest touch. There were glances he let slide, and others he eagerly devoured. All that remained of his other life was the name Grip, and hardly that. His entire life was on idle on the other side of the Atlantic. Two months that didn’t exist. Another I began to form: caterpillar, chrysalis, empty shell, butterfly. Ernst Grip saw only men around him. A hand groped next to him. He took it in his and led it inexorably up between his legs.

  The first time he came, man to man, there were no names, just lips, thighs, and greedy nakedness. Not the second or third time either. For more than two weeks, he gave in to it—he counted sixteen days, or more precisely, sixteen nights. It was as if he had been lame and suddenly learned to walk, never wanting to stop. To express himself in a way that did not require darkness, only the anonymity of bars. Tips on where he should go next whispered as golden chain letters between blow jobs and caresses. A nocturnal pilgrimage between beds and bars. First mostly around Williamsburg, but soon enough also to Manhattan and Chelsea. He woke up sore and empty, always naked, always as himself.

  Benjamin Hayden was the first Grip met in daylight. He was wiry, calm, and squinted whenever he poured something into a glass.

  The first time they crossed paths was at a vernissage with good champagne but lousy art. Benjamin had a small entourage around him, his thin, tanned arm carrying a bottle of champagne he’d stolen from a waitress. He poured for himself and others, pointing casually with the bottleneck at the row of paintings, and said something about how here was yet another American who painted Tuscany as cheap orgasms in ocher. A woman laughed loudest; he filled her glass again, squinting. Then he came up to Grip, standing by himself a few steps away, looked at the canvas in front of him, and said, “Don’t you think Italian customs should seize the paints and brushes from every American who lands at Florence airport?”

  A pair of heels clicked sharply across the floor, a masculine woman in a suit. A pair of long earrings dangled, while in the doorway behind her the waitress stood pointing.

  “Excuse me,” said Benjamin to Grip. Apart from the sound of her heels, he couldn’t have caught more than a movement in the corner of his eye, but he turned to her with warm and open arms.

  A few nights later they passed each other at a bar. Benjamin stopped Grip with one hand over his chest and held out the other to shake.

  “Ben,” he said, presenting himself without the condescension of the vernissage, as if it were obvious that they should get to know each other. It was evening, night thirteen in Grip’s new era.

  There was an undercurrent in Ben that made Grip hold back a little. His first instinct was that Ben was married—a sensitivity he carried from his past. Later he would understand that it was Ben who saw more, who could see what glowed beneath the surface of Grip. He recognized the newcomer, one who had just taken the leap, insatiable, wanting only to devour. Ben was beyond playing at something he was not. Although there were suggestions, and they circled hungrily around each other, they never made contact beyond the first handshake. When decision hung in the air, and Grip pressed on again, Ben took a business card and tucked it in his breast pocket.

  “Please, let me know when you’re ready,” he said. “We can . . .” He paused, struck his finger against the rim of his glass on the bar, looked up again. “Good luck.”

  Later that night and for the next three nights, Grip found other men to be devoured by. He needed to recuperate, didn’t realize it then, didn’t even think about it, but was surprised by his own relief when he called the number on the business card, and Ben suggested that they meet early afternoon at the Whitney Museum café. Just meet the way most people do.

  They sat beside the huge p
late-glass windows, just that, a couple of relaxed hours, parted, and from there everything swept forward. That week Grip’s daily rhythm returned to something like normal—he even woke up alone and at home, and ate breakfast before the construction workers’ jackhammers had stopped for lunch across the street. He ate dinner out with Ben every night, accompanied him to parties a few times. They hung out with Ben’s circle. But no night together, not even close.

  Finally one evening, Ben asked: “Are you ready?”

  Grip understood perfectly. There had been no contract between them. Even after his daily rhythm had been restored, and Benjamin Hayden became Ben, Grip had still desired other men. Lust was lust. As Ben himself said of him, “With that accent and those bulging arms.” It wasn’t complicated, firefighting that had nothing to do with Ben.

  Are you ready?

  To swear an oath, even if the fine print hadn’t yet dried. There and then, at the kind of crossroads in life where at most you get a second to think. Yet he lived for the spirit of that, for the few moments in life when everything hangs in the balance. Grip nodded.

  “Say it,” said Ben.

  Perhaps the realization came just then. “Now I am,” said Grip. It sounded defiant, even if he didn’t mean it that way. Something trembled in Ben. It disappeared. He laughed briefly and said, “You think you are, but warn me beforehand. For God’s sake, warn me.”

  But Grip would never have to do that. Because Ben wasn’t the type to need constant reassurance—when Ben touched him, he did it in a most natural and obvious way. Grip had never experienced that before. Someone whose presence made him feel calm. Nothing more, just that. It changed everything, and a different kind of life began.

  White shirts and a tan can hide a lot. Age was one thing—Ben turned out to be almost ten years older. The other was the virus. That Ben’s fragility could be contagious, Grip wasn’t at all concerned about; instead Ben was the one careful about certain details. He was, after all, the person busy keeping death at bay. His bathroom cabinet was filled with pill bottles, and too often he clung to articles about new findings, and to rumors. There was a certain vanity in it, given that his prognosis was hopeless. Being forced to use condoms, and not kissing, those were trivial, under the circumstances.