Benny & Shrimp (15 page)

I’d seen Märta on the 23rd, and then she was looking like something out of a picture book – cheeks rosy, eyes gleaming, her arms full of sparkly parcels.

Now, sitting on a red plastic chair in the psychiatric unit, I found a distinctly middle-aged woman with a pale, puffy face, and empty hands resting on her knees, palms uppermost.

I knelt down in front of her and put my arms around her; she rested her chin on my shoulder and I could sense she was staring straight ahead at the opposite wall.

For a long time we said nothing.

“What did he do?” I asked in the end. I simply couldn’t imagine what it could be; Robert had put her
through so much already, and she’d always bounced back.

She didn’t answer. More time passed, then her eyes focused again and she asked, with a discontented frown: “Why bother living? So pointless and tiresome!” She stared at me accusingly.

I couldn’t think of anything helpful to say, when the question was put like that.

“But you did want me to come,” I faltered.

“Me?” she said. “I don’t want anything!”

I went to visit her every day, sitting silently beside her for hours. It didn’t seem to disturb her, at any rate. If I asked how she was feeling, she’d mumble things like, “All the indicators have sunk into the red zone and the last krona has fallen out through a hole in my
pocket
”.

On the fourth day, her face pulled itself into a crooked smile and she told me about a test they’d made her fill in, to find out whether she was suicidal. Page after page, hundreds of questions like: “Do you find life meaningless? Always/often/sometimes” and “Do you feel worthless? Constantly/usually/often”.

“If you weren’t suicidal before the test, you
definitely
would be by the end!” she said, showing a glimpse of her old self. And then she told me.

Six months before, Robert had talked her into
agreeing
to be sterilised. She wasn’t able to use a coil and Robert found anything else too off-putting. She thought about it for a long time before swallowing, like a bitter pill, the fact that Robert didn’t want to pay maintenance
for any more children. She wanted Robert, and everything has its price.

The evening before Christmas Eve, a woman rang and asked to speak to Robert. When he hung up, he mumbled something, put on his leather jacket and went out.

He didn’t come back. Märta spent Christmas Eve alone. But she knew Robert, knew better than to ring the police or worry about traffic accidents. She would find out in due course, and she was already bracing
herself
for the blow.

He turned up on the 27th, hand in hand with a young girl whom Märta at first thought sad and dumpy.

Then she saw that the girl must be five months
pregnant
, if not more.

It transpired that Robert had finally found True Love for the first time, and wanted to do everything he could for Jeanette and the baby. They were on their way to parentcraft classes at the maternity clinic, and could he borrow Märta’s car over New Year, since they were old friends? Jeanette had family outside town.

He addressed Märta, whose partner he’d been – on and off – for twelve years, with vaguely distracted
affection
, as if she were a cousin or an old school friend.

“And that was the way he saw it, just then. I’d swear!” Märta said.

“Haven’t you got enough kids already?” was all she said to Robert.

“Well, you wouldn’t understand, would you, Märta?” Robert answered without turning a hair. “I
mean, you’ve deliberately chosen not to have any
children
in your life. You can’t understand how much a man can long for children when he’s found the right woman.”

Märta lent them the car. Just to get them out of the flat, double quick.

My hands were shaking when I got back to the library.

A week later, Märta was discharged. She stood in my kitchen, chopping onions for lunch.

“I feel like an extra in the film of my own life,” she said. “I’m milling around in the background and
charging
in and out with armies and mobs and saying rhubarb rhubarb in crowds. But there’s someone else in close-up in the foreground. It’s just that I can’t see who it is.”

She often expressed herself in dreamlike terms now, without embarrassment or explanation. And then she did something that really moved me.

She happened to cut her thumb with the knife, a deep gash. She stared at the blood for a few moments, then caught sight of the ridiculous poster Benny had bought me of the couple in the shell.

She padded quickly across the room, climbed onto the sofa and pressed her thumb over the woman’s eyes, gentle as a caress.

Now the woman in the shell was crying blood.

She couldn’t even drive my car back to the farm, because she had to sit with her friend at the hospital, she said. She sat there all day long and worked evenings. I had to take the bus in and fetch the car from town; she’d perched the keys on one of the tyres. The car was parked outside her block of flats. I went into the
courtyard
and stared up at her window. Her blinds were down – those slatted wooden ones; she hadn’t got any proper curtains.

She wasn’t answering the phone, hadn’t even left the answering machine on.

Five days went by and I heard nothing from her. I made a start on all the official forms about the farm that came shooting out of my mailbox every blessed day. If
she ever comes here again, she’ll find my cold corpse suffocated by an avalanche of forms, I thought. And then I expect she’ll put me under one of those surveyor’s marker stones and start looking around for the next poor devil on a bench in the cemetery. I was trying
really
hard to be mad at her; it hurt a bit less that way, and at least I could get some sleep.

I mean, I didn’t know if she just didn’t give a shit about me or if she really had a good reason for staying away. Would I have done the same for Bengt-Göran? Sat with him day after day in the psychiatric ward, taken time off work and made it up in the evenings? Had no time to ring her?

Huh, there’s no way I can picture myself doing that! Blimey, there’s nothing in Bengt-Göran’s head to go wrong. You could lobotomise him with a power saw and nobody would notice the difference. And we’re not those sort of mates; it’s more a case of a habit we’ve had since we were kids, and I haven’t had time to find
anyone
else.

And at the back of my mind I was as suspicious of “nerves” as a lot of the older folk around here. “They should have shot the first psychologist, then we wouldn’t have had any problems,” one old chap said. Those weren’t real illnesses. Only shirkers blamed their nerves, to avoid pulling their weight.

If I’d gone on like that when Shrimp was there, she’d have felled me onto the couch with a kick to the groin, analysed me into small bits and put me back together again, I know that all right.

Then all of a sudden, she rang. She sounded stressed and my ears pricked up. “What is it?”

“It’s heavy going at the moment,” was all she said. I wondered if she was going to dump me there and then, over the phone. Think quickly, Benny.

“I shall be thirty-seven on Friday,” I blurted out, before she could interrupt. “Do you want to go out somewhere with me? I know you’re hardly in the mood for champagne, but a swift beer or something? It’s not an important day or anything.” Nervous as hell.

“Or a teeny-weeny glass of low-alcohol cider on such a totally insignificant day?” She sounded a bit more cheerful, and then she said she’d organise the
celebrations
and come over the night before so she could bring me breakfast in bed. I warbled with delight like some bloody skylark. She was coming back!

There’ve been times when I’ve sat on my cemetery bench and wondered if the beginning of the end was when Violet and Bengt-Göran lugged their movable feast through the door, or whether it happened on my birthday. I mean, we were still together, Shrimp and I – it was more as if the oxygen was starting to run out.

It all started so well. The evening before my birthday, we fooled around and giggled just like in the good old days, and had some generous pre-birthday samples from the bottle of dry champagne she’d brought, which I honestly thought tasted like something fermented in my can of formic acid. She rummaged and banged about behind the closed kitchen door, and hid
something
in my wardrobe. I clung onto her that night as if I
were a drowning man, and she the only life raft in sight. It was late when we got to sleep.

In the morning, the alarm clock woke me as usual. I stole a glance in her direction, waiting for my coffee.

But she was still asleep! I lay there for a bit, chewing my nails and wondering if I could discreetly make her wake up. I set the alarm off again and cleared my throat like some old consumptive. But she didn’t stir. Probably something to do with the fact that she usually starts work at ten, while I start at six.

I got out to the cowshed half an hour later than my usual milking time, with very mixed feelings and
suffering
the after-effects of yesterday’s sour champagne. And nothing went to plan. Because I was late, the cows were more unruly than usual and a heifer kicked me on the shin. I wasn’t in the best of moods by the time I’d finished.

When I got in, I showered as fast as I could and then opened the kitchen door a crack to peep in. The place was deserted. She hadn’t woken up.

Hell, I was glad she was there, anyway, in the same house. It was uncalled for, really, to go up to the
bedroom
and get dressed as noisily as I could to see how she reacted.

“Do I catch a whiff of burning martyr?” I heard from the tangle of bedclothes. She looked at the clock and peered at me through half-shut eyes.

“I wasn’t expecting anything,” I mumbled.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Angry, pale blue eyes, white eyelashes blinking in
irritation. She jumped up and started pulling on her marvellous underwear, one hundred-per-cent
unbleached
cotton. “Well then, you’ll get exactly what you expected. Nothing!”

Was it my fault now? Without a word, I lumbered downstairs; she followed, managing to stamp angrily even in stockinged feet.

I turned on the tap to fill the coffee pot. The tap exploded and spat air. Damn it! The bloody pump had broken down again! I’d have to go out and look. And get hold of a plumber!

Shrimp gave me a surreptitious glance as she fussed about with something in the fridge.

“There won’t be any coffee!” I said. “The pump’s stopped again!”

“Then we’ll have beer and cake!” she smiled. But I was too het up to note the softening of her tone. It didn’t occur to her that when the water runs out on a farm, not being able to make coffee’s a minor matter. Your main problem is twenty-four thirsty cows, plus followers.

“Beer! Swedish cows don’t drink beer, even if I did happen to have a few hundred litres to hand! But it’s a good job you’re here: I need an assistant. I’ll have a go at fixing it myself before I ring the plumber! We’ll have to get out there right away,” I said, trying to sound a bit friendlier.

She looked at me and didn’t budge from the spot. I’d already got my jacket on. “Take this!” I said, throwing her my leather one. “And you can get Mum’s boots –
they’re in the wardrobe. What are you waiting for?”

“Nothing!” she hissed. “I’ve got a job waiting for me! You’ll have to find somebody else to be your farmhand today!”

There was nothing more to be said. I ran to the pump shed, and after a while, I heard her car start, over by the house.

I struggled with the pump on my own for a couple of hours, fuelled by pure rage, but it was a job that
needed
two people. I got absolutely nowhere, and went in to ring the plumber. On the kitchen table was something that looked like an enormous pork sausage, and a
cowpat
on a plate. Turned out to be a whole roll of salt beef, plus a very odd-looking chocolate cake. There was a note beside them.

“Benny! You’re an idiot, and so am I. Eat the cake, sweat and toil all day, then come round to my place by half six this evening. Leave your overalls at home – I’m taking you out to celebrate.”

I was too exhausted to feel anything. The main thought in my mind was that if I collapsed on the
settee
, I might get a couple of hours’ sleep. I ate a bit of the cake and salt beef, lay down on the kitchen settle and had just dozed off when the plumber tooted his horn in the yard. Out again, tired as hell. It took several hours to fix the pump, and then it was milking time again.

At half past six I threw myself into the car, smartly turned out, my hair slicked down with water. The chocolate cake and the salt beef were fighting it out in my guts; I hadn’t had time to eat anything else. I
hope she takes me to some really blood-oozing steakhouse, I thought. Béarnaise sauce!

Lack of sleep and food is the best explanation I have for what happened later that evening.