* * *
She feels stupid for going with him. Now, afterward, she feels so incredibly stupid, so stupid that she almost deserves to be locked up in this room. His voice and his outstretched hand deceived her into not screaming. She still hasn’t screamed.
* * *
When she’s about to fall asleep, she thinks of her real room. She thinks of her teddy bears and her mother’s goodnight hugs. She tells herself she can’t forget them.
CHAPTER 15
Kouplan leaves the Globe Arena as fast as he can. His legs hurry, but his mind puts on the brakes. Behind him, there are twenty enormous police officers.
He imagines he’s M.B. and he’s carrying a little girl. Over the bridge, up between the houses on Skärmarbrink. She’s crying, she’s frightened. If he’s prepared, he would have put her to sleep with something. If he’s acting on impulse, he’s covering her mouth.
There are many large-nosed men in the world. He underlines this fact in his mind, so he’s not blind to reality. A large-nosed man does not necessarily have to be the human trafficker that Rashid’s roommates know. There could be two large-nosed men who carry small girls through the streets of Stockholm.
When he arrives at the subway, if he’s still M.B. with a crying girl on his shoulder, he’ll have to dig out a ticket in order to get through the turnstile. That would mean he’d have to put down the child and the child could run away. Unless he asks the ticket agent to let him through.
The man in the booth has pig eyes and psoriasis. He blinks at Kouplan.
“The day before yesterday?”
“No, Monday last week. Were you working then?”
“Ummm … nah … no, no I wasn’t.”
“Who was?”
The man blinks again.
“I know, but I can’t tell you.”
“You can’t?”
“No, I’m not allowed.”
For a few seconds, they look at each other, the agent and Kouplan. In silence, at a dead end.
“Well, do you think you could give him a call?”
“Maybe I could.”
Kouplan tells a roundabout story about a guy with a child who dropped a backpack, which Kouplan hadn’t brought back with him at the moment for a number of reasons, and the man with the pig eyes could ask why he didn’t bring the backpack to lost-and-found, but he doesn’t. Instead, he heaves a large sigh and pushes a Post-it note through the opening.
“Write down your number and we’ll see if she wants to speak with you.”
Swedish is Kouplan’s fourth language. He’d learned most of it himself, by watching Swedish films ten times in a row and reading books a hundred times over. He’d probably never think of Swedish as his native language, but he knew enough that we’ll see usually means no. The man would probably not call the other ticket agent; she’ll probably never call him back; but Kouplan writes his number down anyway. He’ll spread his questioning around Globen, Gullmarsplan, and Skärmarbrink and be like a sea turtle mother: hope that at least one survives.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, his phone rings. Unknown number. It can be the ticket agent, the man at the kiosk, the girl at the Subway. But it’s Rashid.
He says he’s been thinking about Kouplan.
“I was so surprised when I saw you at the grill,” he says. “I couldn’t bring myself to ask.”
Kouplan knows what Rashid wants to ask, but has no desire to talk about it.
“Why? There’s nothing to ask about,” he says shortly.
“No, no … obviously … but I … I just wanted to know how you’re doing?”
Rashid, always considerate.
“I’m fine,” Kouplan said. “I got a little money from a job. Nothing criminal,” he added quickly, imagining Rashid’s expression of relief. “How are you doing? How’s the family?”
Kouplan almost bites his tongue. He doesn’t really care to know about Rashid’s family.
“Bad,” Rashid says. “Things are bad.”
“I’m sorry.”
He hears Rashid swallow a sigh, wonders where he is and whose phone he’s borrowing.
“Why are you looking for…?” Rashid asks a moment later. “Does it have to do with the money?”
Kouplan appreciates Rashid’s censorship.
“Yes, it does,” he replies. “It has to do with the actual thing I’m looking for.”
“I understand,” Rashid says. “You don’t want to think about it. You don’t want to think about others, but when you do…”
“Right.”
“I asked around a little more and they asked why I was asking. Soon they’ll be thinking I’m the one interested in little girls.”
Rashid seemed to have lifted his self-censorship. Kouplan waits for Rashid to continue.
“Nobody knows where she is. Nobody knows where he is. But there’s this interesting thing … the gossip starts to circulate … so my questions have gone out and some answers have come back. There’s a schoolgirl, about seven years old. Blond. It turns my stomach, but … Kouplan, it’s like they’re advertising her.”
It would turn Kouplan’s stomach, too, if he let this information reach his heart.
“She could be six years old. If they’re saying she’s around seven, she could be six,” Kouplan said, mostly to himself.
“You have to be very careful,” Rashid said. “This is no boy scout we’re dealing with. And we have nobody to turn to, remember.”
“I understand. Thanks, Rashid.”
Kouplan would have never met Rashid if the two of them hadn’t had their asylum rejected. In other circumstances, they could laugh and joke on their own phones with legitimate accounts, they could hang out together, and Rashid’s wife and kids wouldn’t have anything more to worry about than the October darkness.
“There’s hope in hopelessness,” Kouplan says. “The day always follows the night.”
All he has is a proverb. It seems empty, says as much about hopelessness as about hope.
Rashid answers like all the guys at the grill.
“Insha’Allah.”
* * *
The police are never on the bus. Like, almost never. That’s why Kouplan is feeling at ease as he rides to Pernilla’s. That’s why he’s taking the bus over there instead of calling. The trees and the roads around her house seem like places the police never go.
There are things he’s been thinking about ever since he met Pernilla. Something about her reaction to the loss of her child. He knows the stages people go through in crisis: shock, denial, prayer, fear, rage, despair, acceptance. Not just because he’s read about them, but also because he’s seen them. He thinks that Pernilla must still be in shock. But perhaps also in denial, perhaps also afraid. But also something he can’t put his finger on. Today she’s been washing the windows.
“I have to think about something else,” she says. “It’s easier if I keep busy so I don’t think about it.”
Kouplan knows. His own mother baked cookies frenetically after his brother disappeared. All the craziness has to leave through the hands, she’d said, rather than seep into the brain. They ate cookies for weeks. He can still taste the sweetly sour flavor of his brother’s absence. So he ought to recognize desperation.
“How good you can get it out in a positive way,” he said, looking at the rubber squeegee still in her hand.
Pernilla hears his undertone.
“So that I don’t slit my wrists, you mean.”
Kouplan starts to blush, but doesn’t follow up on his embarrassment.
“Pernilla, about Julia,” he starts to say instead. “Is she tall for her age? I mean, could people mistake her for a seven-year-old?”
Something in Pernilla’s eyes shifts. Kouplan wishes he didn’t have to ask about Julia; that Pernilla could simply continue to clean windows therapeutically a little longer. Her upper lip curls, reminding Kouplan of a child who’s lost her teddy bear.
“Yes,” she replies with a sharp intake of breath
. “Yes, maybe she could be taken for being older. Not a nine or ten-year-old, that’s for sure, but maybe a seven-year-old. Why are you asking?”
“I don’t have a photo of Julia,” Kouplan answers. “So if someone says they’ve seen a seven-year-old girl…”
“Has someone seen her?”
Her eyes become crazy, wild, concerned. She has the right to hear about M.B.
“No,” he says, and her eyes calm down.
Theoretically, it’s not a lie. Neither Rashid nor his roommates have seen the girl.
“So Julia is blond and looks like you,” he says. “Can you tell me any more details about her looks?”
Pernilla sighs deeply: takes in a lung-full of air and lets it out.
“Are you hungry?”
* * *
The sun goes down three minutes earlier every evening. It’s already dark when Kouplan gets on the bus, eight meatballs warming his stomach, and he thinks that those three missing minutes are noticed most in October. They come with the cold that goes through jeans, scarves, earflaps—frozen people can’t afford to look from side to side—another way to protect the self.
He’s written down everything Pernilla told him in his notebook. Pernilla couldn’t remember things well at first, but after he asked her many questions, he finally had a good description. Blond hair, narrow face, thin. About 128 centimeters tall, no birth marks. Thin but normal lips. (Thinner than Pernilla’s.)
On the lines above it, he’s written down the details about the man he plans to meet tomorrow. He hasn’t told Pernilla about it.
These three minutes of extra darkness—he really doesn’t need them. He can feel them dig deep into his soul, pull him back into the nothingness he’s lived in for much too long. Pernilla had to clean the windows in order not to go crazy thinking about Julia. Kouplan had to search for Julia so the darkness wouldn’t eat at his soul.
The meatballs had been made of chicken. She’d smiled as she told him, even showing him the list of ingredients on the box.
“The ones I usually buy have pork,” she’d said as she emptied the carton into the frying pan. As if it were completely normal to change your meatball brand in order to match your private detective’s eating preferences. As he thinks about it, he realizes that Pernilla has made sure he’s had something to eat each time he’d been by. Each and every time.
What if someone offers him pork tomorrow?
The thought hits him as he gets off the blue line and walks quickly to Regina’s apartment. If he’s offered a hot dog, should he say no? He has no idea what Swedish priests think about Muslims. There’s always the risk they’re no different from everyone else.
When he puts his key in the lock, he realizes he’s solved this problem. If Thor, the priest, offers him hot dogs, he’ll just do the most Swedish thing of all: say he’s allergic.
CHAPTER 16
Thor lives in a wooden house surrounded by a fence and wrought-iron gate. Between the house and the fence are several meters of lawn and bushes. Kouplan finds himself searching for the kind of bomb shelter a Swedish gardening expert would have situated behind the house—if Sweden had been at war. Instead, roses are growing, beautiful in so many ways. He strides to the front door. There’s some kind of metal doorknocker with a name on it. Two more quick steps and he gives it a knock.
Something about men in religious life leads to beards. Christianity says nothing about facial hair, so probably this has to do with Swedish priest culture picturing bearded prophets and old men on clouds. Thor follows this convention. His well-groomed goatee declares: “Hi, I’m a deep-thinking and pleasant guy who knows how to use a trimmer.” In other countries, a mustache would have made the same declaration.
“Welcome,” Thor says. “Come on in.”
Just like men with mustaches, he doesn’t reveal if he is bewildered by Kouplan’s visit. Or nervous. He gestures to where Kouplan can hang his jacket, walks him past two paintings depicting moose into the living room with its brown leather furniture.
“I’d like to know why you think you need my help,” he says, while he pours tea for them without asking first. “You’d been speaking with someone from Sofia?”
Kouplan nods, takes a sip of the boiling hot tea, nods again.
“I’m looking for someone who knows Pernilla Svensson,” he says.
Thor slurps loudly and meets Kouplan’s eyes with his own steel-gray ones.
“Unfortunately, I can’t tell you whether I’ve met her or not. Professional confidentiality.”
“But I met her. She, herself, told me she’d met you.”
“Then I don’t understand. If you’ve met with her, why do you need to talk to me?”
Kouplan shakes his head as he picks up the cookie the priest has offered.
“I need to talk to you because she mystifies me. She said you were the only person who ever accepted her as she is.”
Thor sighs deeply, picks up a cookie, and puts the whole thing in his mouth. This keeps him from speaking for a moment. His goatee bobs up and down as his jaws chew frenetically.
“I cannot reveal whom I have met as part of my work. That’s in my contract. But there’re some general insights I can share.”
Kouplan pricks up his ears and tries not to appear impatient.
“In general,” Thor repeats with emphasis, “I can say that, in conversation, I do my best to make a person feel understood, even when it is difficult to be understood. Or believed. But there are different schools of thought as far as this is concerned. Lots of discussion. How does one help someone who is lost?”
His gray eyes bore into Kouplan’s as if demanding an answer to his question, which, in all honesty, is fairly nebulous.
“By trying to force her to go where she doesn’t want to go? Or by taking her hand and asking her where her soul strives to go?”
Kouplan catches his breath as he realizes the meaning behind the priest’s questions. Which answer would have been the one the most helpful to him? A thought begins to bubble up in his mind, but he represses it. His body has given him the answer.
“So you took Pernilla’s hand,” he says.
He should not have mentioned Pernilla by name. The direct statement reminds the priest of his professional confidentiality and he smiles that pious smile that is probably taught in divinity school.
“Perhaps you might want to tell me why you decided to look me up. Your questions regarding Pernilla. Do they also apply to you? Are you seeking something yourself?”
Kouplan understands why Pernilla put her trust in this priest. He can almost hear Pernilla and the priest talking to each other. Thor’s considerate, deeply personal questions. But Kouplan does not need psychotherapy. At least, that’s not why he is here.
“It’s Julia, her daughter,” he says. “She’s disappeared.”
He’s certain that the priest reacts to the mention of Julia’s name. The man’s jaws clench a fleeting moment; he draws in one breath. After that, nothing more to indicate anything.
“I am sorry,” Thor says. “I cannot tell you anything regarding a specific person.”
This is a strange reaction for someone who has just heard that a child is missing. A normal person would exclaim: Oh my God, she’s gone missing? The face would blanch. Exclamations. Questions about calling the police. But this priest has an uncanny control over his reactions when they fall under professional confidentiality. There is real compassion in his gaze, but again, several times, he replies he can say no more.
One, two, three, Kouplan’s brain sorts his thoughts into alternatives. Number one: Swedes don’t react when children go missing. Number two: Thor knows something about Pernilla that makes him not surprised by this information. Number three: Thor knows what has happened.
* * *
He has the feeling that his investigative methods have been completely ineffectual up to now. He’s taken a peek into Patrick’s home and seen a statue and a flower vase. Observed the décolletage of a librarian. He has to be, he
is, smarter than that.
“I’ve never been in a priest’s home before,” he says using his most charming smile.
Thor chuckles at this revelation.
“I hope my humble abode isn’t a disappointment.”
Whatever abode means, it doesn’t seem to make the goateed priest nervous. Or he hides it well.
“I’ve never even been in a house this large in Sweden,” Kouplan adds. “We only lived in apartments.”
Thor snaps at the bait. Or realizes it would seem odd not to.
Line one. Line two.
“Would you like a tour, then?”
* * *
Kouplan and the priest view a kitchen with pinewood tables and chairs, a bedroom with even more moose paintings on the walls, a bathroom with butterflies on the shower curtain, a spiral staircase to the second floor. As they walk, Thor asks where Kouplan comes from. He says he’s from Afghanistan. Just in case someone comes to Thor and asks. Or if Thor goes to someone and asks. Kouplan cannot trust the priest with his pious smile and steel-gray eyes, not for a second.
“This door leads to the pantry,” Thor says. “This one to the basement.”
Kouplan studies the doors and tries one of them, mostly to see the priest’s reaction, but his glance reveals nothing more than jam jars and sacks of potatoes. The other door is locked.
“We usually keep that door locked,” Thor says. “Over here is the guest bathroom. And on the second floor, we just have our children’s former bedrooms.”
* * *
He takes Kouplan’s hands between his when they say goodbye. He doesn’t shake them, but holds them, like a priest.
“Good luck,” he says. “Pernilla is lucky to have you on her side.”
After a long pause, he says, “Help her.”
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