Let the right one in (22 page)

They lay like that for a long time. When Oskar could tell from his mom's breathing that she had fallen asleep again, when the lump of their hands was warmed through and starting to get sweaty, he whispered:

"Where have you been?"

"Getting some food."

Her lips tickled his shoulder. She loosened her hands from his, rolled over on her back. Oskar stayed in the same position for a moment and looked into Gene Simmons' eyes. Then he turned onto his stomach. Behind her head he imagined the tiny figures in the wallpaper eyeing her with curiosity. Her eyes were wide open, blue-black in the moonlight. Oskar got goosepimples on his arms.

"What about your dad?"

"Gone."

"Gone?" Oskar couldn't help raising his voice.

"Shhh. It doesn't matter."

"But. . . what... is he—?"

"It. Doesn't. Matter."

Oskar nodded, signaling that he wasn't going to ask her any more questions, and Eli put both her hands under her head, staring up at the ceiling.

"I was feeling lonely. So I came here. Was that OK?"

"Yes. But... you don't have any clothes on."

"I'm sorry. Is that disgusting?"

"No. But aren't you freezing?"

"No, no."

The white strands in her hair were gone. Yes, she looked altogether healthier than when they met yesterday. Her cheeks were rounder, the dimples more pronounced, when Oskar joked and asked:

"You didn't happen to walk past the Lover's kiosk or anything?" Eli laughed, then made her voice very serious and said with a ghostly voice:

"Yes, I did and you know what? He poked his head out and said:

'Coooome ... coooom ... I have candy and ... banaaaanas.

Oskar buried his face in the pillow. Eli turned her head toward his and whispered in his ear: "Cooome . . . jelly beans .. ." Oskar shouted: "No, no!" into the pillow. They kept doing this for a while. Then Eli looked at the books in his bookcase and Oskar gave a synopsis of his favorite:
The Fog
by James Herbert. Eli's back glowed white like a sheet of paper in the dark as she lay there on her stomach in bed and studied the bookcase.

He held his hand so close to her skin that he could feel the warmth from it. Then he contracted his fingers and walked them down her back whispering, "Bulleribulleri bock. How many horns are sticking . . . up?"

"Mmm. Eight?"

"Eight you say and eight there are, bulleribulleribock." Then Eli did the same to him but he was not at all as good at telling how many fingers there were as she was. On the other hand, he was much better at rock, paper, scissors. Seven to three. Then they played again. He won nine to one. Eli started to get a little irritated.

"Do you
know
what I am going to pick?" Yes.

"How?"

"I just know, that's all. It happens all the time. I get a picture in my head."

"One more time. I won't think this time, just choose."

"You can try."

They played again. Oskar won easily with eight-two. Eli pretended to be enraged, turned to the wall.

"I'm not playing with you. You cheat."

Oskar looked at her white back. Did he dare? Yes, now that she wasn't looking at her he could do it.

"Eli. Will you go out with me?"

She turned around, pulled the covers up to her chin.

"What does that mean?"

Oskar stared at the spines of the books in front of him, shrugged.

"That. . . you would want to be together with me."

"What do you mean 'together'?"

Her voice sounded suspicious, hard. Oskar hurriedly said: "Maybe you already have a guy at your school."

"No, I don't... but Oskar, I can't. I'm not a girl." Oskar snorted. "What do you mean? You're a
guy?"

"No, no."

"Then what are you?"

"Nothing."

"What do you mean, 'nothing'?"

"I'm nothing. Not a child. Not old. Not a boy. Not a girl. Nothing." Oskar pulled his finger down the spine of
The Rats,
pinched his lips together and shook his head.
"Will
you go out with me or not?"

"Oskar I'd really like to but... can't we just be together like we already are?" ... yes.

"Are you sad? We can kiss, if you like."

"No!"

"You don't want to?"

"No, I don't!"

Eli frowned.

"Do you do anything in particular with someone you're going out with?"

"No."

"It's just like normal?"

"Yes."

Eli looked suddenly happy, folded her arms over her stomach, and gazed at Oskar.

"Then we can go out. We can be together."

"We can?"

"Yes."

"Good."

With a quiet happiness in his belly, Oskar kept studying the titles of the books. Eli lay still, waiting. After a while she said:

"Is there anything else?"

"No."

"Can't we lie down together again like we did before?" Oskar rolled around so his back was against her. She put her arms around him and he took her hands. They lay like that until Oskar started to get sleepy. His eyes felt sandy; it was hard to keep them open. Before he slid off into sleep he said:

"Eli?"

"Mmm?"

"I'm glad you came over."

"Yes."

"Why... do you smell like gasoline?"

Eli's hands gripped more tightly around his hands, against his heart. Hugged. The room grew larger all around Oskar, the walls and ceiling softened, the floor fell away, and when he felt the whole bed floating in the air he knew he was asleep.

31 OCTOBER

Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty
mountain tops. I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

William Shakespeare,
Romeo and Juliet,
III:5-

Gray. Everything was gray. His eyes wouldn't focus; it was like lying inside a rain cloud. Lying? Yes, he was lying down. There was pressure against his back, buttocks, heels. A hissing sound on his left side. The gas. The gas was on. No. It was turned off. Turned on. Something happened to his chest in time to the hissing sound. It filled and emptied in time to that sound.

Was he still at the pool? Was
he
hooked up to the gas? How could he, in that case, be awake? Was he even awake?

Hakan tried to blink. Nothing happened, almost nothing. Something jerked in front of his one eye, murkying his sight further. His other eye wasn't there. He tried to open his mouth. His mouth wasn't there. He conjured up an image of his mouth, as he had seen it in mirrors, tried .. . but it wasn't there. Nothing responded to his commands. Like trying to inject consciousness into a rock in order to get it to move. No contact. A sensation of strong heat over his whole face. A dart of fear shooting into his stomach. His face was plastered with something warm, stiffening. Paraffin wax. A machine was doing his breathing because his whole face was covered in wax.

His thoughts stretched out toward his right hand. Yes. There it was. He opened it, made a fist, felt the tops of his fingers against his palm. Touch. He sighed with relief, imagined a sigh of relief, since his chest didn't move according to his wishes.

He lifted his hand, slowly. A tightening sensation over his chest and shoulder. The hand entered his field of vision, a fuzzy lump. He moved it toward his face, stopped. There was a low beeping by his side. He carefully turned his head in its direction, felt something hard scrap against his chin. He moved his hand toward it.

A metal socket was implanted in his throat. A plastic tube fed into the metal socket. He followed the plastic tubing as far as he could, as far as a grooved metallic piece where the tube ended. He understood. This was what he should pull out when he wanted to die. They had set it up like this for him. He rested his fingers against the end of the tube.
Eli. The pool. The boy. Acid.

His memory stopped at the part where he unscrewed the lid. He must have poured it over himself, all according to the plan. The only miscalculation was that he was still alive. He had seen pictures. Women who had gotten acid thrown into their faces by jealous boyfriends. He didn't want to feel his face, even less see it.

His hold on the tube tightened. It didn't give way. Screwed in. He tried to turn the metal end and, as he had suspected, it turned. He kept unscrewing it. He searched for his left hand, but only sensed a prickling ball of pain where that hand should have been. With the tops of the fingers on his living hand he now felt a light, fluttering pressure. Air was starting to escape from around the seal. The hissing sound had changed slightly, become thinner.

The gray light around him was infiltrated by something blinking red. He tried to close his one eye. Thought about Socrates and the jar of poison. Because he had seduced the youth of Athens. Don't forget to offer a rooster to ... what was he called? Archimandros? No ...

A sucking sound as a door was pushed open and a white figure moved toward him. He felt fingers prying open his fingers, prying them from the metal end. A woman's voice.

"What are you doing?"

Asclepius. Offer a cock to Asclepius.

"Let go!"

A cock. To Asclepius. The god of healing.

A hissing sound when his fingers gave way and the tube was screwed back in place.

"We'll have to guard you from now on."
Offer it to him, do not forget.

+

Eli was gone when Oskar woke up. He lay with his face toward the wall. His back got cold. He drew himself up on one elbow and looked around the room. The window was open a crack. She must have let herself out that way.

Naked.

He rolled over in his bed, pressed his face against the place where she had slept, sniffed. Nothing. He moved his nose back and forth across the sheet trying to discern the tiniest glimmer of her presence, but nothing. Not even that smell of gasoline.

Had it really happened? He lay down on his stomach, thought about it.
Yes.

It was real. Her fingers on his back. The memory of her fingers on his back. Bulleribock. His mom had played it with him when he was little. But this was now. Not long ago. The hairs on his arms and on his neck stood up.

He got out of bed and started to pull his clothes on. When he had his pants on he walked up to the window. No snowfall. Four degrees below zero. Good. If the snow had started to melt it would be too slushy to set the bags of advertising down outside. He thought about crawling naked out of a window when it was four degrees below zero outside, down into snow-covered bushes, down into ...

No.

He leaned forward, blinked.

The snow on the bushes was completely undisturbed.

Last night when he had stood there he had looked out onto a clean sweep of snow that ran down to the path. It looked exactly the same now. He opened the window a little more, stuck his head out. The bushes reached all the way up to the wall below his window, the snow cover as well. And it was undisturbed.

Oskar looked to the left, along the rough surface of the outside wall. Her window was three meters away.

Cold air swept over Oskar's naked chest. It must have snowed last night after she went back to her room. That was the only explanation. But anyway .. . now that he thought about it: how had she made it
up
to the window? Had she climbed up the bushes?

But then the snow couldn't look like this. And it hadn't been snowing when he went to bed. Neither her body nor her hair had been damp, so it couldn't have been snowing then. When did she go?

Some time between the time that she left and when she was here it must
have snowed enough to cover the tracks of. . .

Oskar shut the window, continued to dress. It was unbelievable. He started thinking it was all a dream again. Then he saw the note. Folded and left under the clock on his desk. He took it out and unfolded it. THEN WINDOW, LET DAY IN AND LET LIFE OUT.

A heart, and then:

SEE YOU TONIGHT, ELI.

He read the note five times. Then he thought about her, standing here by the desk as she wrote it. Gene Simmons' face on the wall, half a meter behind her, his tongue sticking out.

He leaned over the desk and took the poster down from the wall, crinkled it into a ball, and threw it into the trash.

Then he read the short note three more times, folded it, and put it in his pocket. Put on the last of his clothes. Today there could be five papers in each advertising packet as far as he was concerned. It would still be as easy as pie.

+

The room smelled of smoke and the dust particles danced in the rays of sunlight that filtered in through the blinds. Lacke had just woken up, was lying on his back in bed, coughing. Dust particles were doing a funny dance in front of his eyes. A smoker's cough. He turned, managed to get a hold of the lighter and cigarette packet that was on the nightstand next to an overflowing ashtray.

He helped himself to a cigarette—Camel lights, Virginia was starting to get health conscious in her old age—lit it, rolled over onto his back again with one arm behind his head, and reflected on the situation. Virginia had left for work a few hours earlier, probably fairly tired. They had stayed awake for a long time after making love, talked and smoked. It was close to two in the morning when Virginia put out the last cigarette and said it was time to sleep. Lacke had slipped out of bed after a while, had drained the dregs of the bottle of wine, and smoked a few more cigarettes before he went back to bed. Maybe mostly because he liked this: crawling into bed next to a warm sleeping body.

Too bad he hadn't managed to arrange his life so he always had someone next to him. If there could have been someone, it would have been Virginia. Anyway ... damn it, he had heard from others how things were for her. Rollercoaster times. Times when she drank too much in city pubs, dragged home any old guy. She didn't want to talk about that, but she had aged more than she needed to these past few years.

If he and Virginia could have ... yes, what? Sell everything, buy a house in the country, grow their own potatoes. Sure, but it wouldn't last. After a month they would be getting on each others' nerves, and she had her mom here, her job, and he had . .. well, his stamps.