Let the right one in (32 page)

Curled up on the kitchen floor, with her hand pressed against her mouth, greedily sucking like a newborn child that finds its mother's breast for the first time, she felt—for the second time on this terrible day—calm. About half an hour after she had stood up from the floor, swept the shards up from the floor, and put on a Band-Aid, the anxiety had started to return. That was when Lacke had rung the bell.

When she had sent him away and locked the door she walked out into the kitchen and put the box of chocolates in the pantry. She sat down on a kitchen chair and tried to understand. The anxiety would not let her. Soon it would force her to her feet again. The only thing she knew was that no one could be with her here. Particularly not Lacke. She would hurt him. The anxiety would drive her to it.

She had contracted some kind of disease. There were medicines for diseases.

Tomorrow she would consult a doctor, someone who could examine her and say that: Well, this was simply an attack of X. We'll have to put you on Y and Z for a couple of weeks. That'll clear it right up.

She walked to and fro in the apartment. It was starting to get unbearable again.

She hit her arms, her legs, but the small fish had come back to life and nothing helped. She knew what she had to do. She sobbed from fear of the pain but the actual sensation was so brief and the relief so great. She walked out into the kitchen and got a sharp little fruit knife, went back out and sat down in the couch in the living room, rested the blade against the underside of her arm.

Only to get her through the night. Tomorrow she would seek help. It was self-evident she couldn't keep going like this. Drink her own blood. Of course not. There would have to be a change. But for now ... The saliva rose up in her mouth, wet anticipation. She cut into herself. Deeply...

7 NOVEMBER [EVENING]

Oskar cleared the table and his dad did the dishes. The eider duck had been delicious, of course. No shot. There was not much to wash off the plates. After they had eaten most of the bird and almost all of the potato they had sopped up the remains on their plates with white bread. That was the best part. Pour out gravy on the plate and sop it up with porous bits of white bread that half-dissolved in the gravy and then melted in your mouth.

His dad wasn't a great cook or anything, but three dishes—
pytt-i-panna,
fried herring, and roasted seabird—he made so often that he had mastered them. Tomorrow they would have
pytt-i-panna
made from the leftovers.

Oskar had spent the hours before dinner in his room. He had his own room at his dad's house that was bare compared to his room in town, but he liked it. In town he had posters and pictures, a lot of things; it was always changing. This room never changed and that was exactly what he liked about it. It looked the same now as when he was seven years old.

When he walked into the room, with its familiar damp smell that lingered in the air after a rapid heating job in anticipation of his visit, it was as if nothing had happened for ... a long time.

Here were still the Donald Duck and Bamse comic books bought during the many summers of years past. He no longer read them when he was in town, but here he did. He knew the stories by heart but he read them again.

While the smells filtered in from the kitchen he lay on his bed and read an old issue of Donald Duck. Donald, his nephews, and Uncle Scrooge were traveling to a distant country where there was no money and the cap tops of the bottles containing Uncle Scrooge's calming tonic became the currency.

When he had finished reading he busied himself with the assortment of lures and sinkers that he kept in an old sewing kit his dad had given him. Tied a new line with loose hooks, five of them, and attached the lures for summertime herring fishing.

Then they ate, and when his dad was done with the dishes they played tic-tac-toe.

Oskar liked sitting like that with his dad; the graph paper on the thin table, their heads leaning over the page, close to each other. The fire crackled in the fireplace.

Oskar was crosses and his dad circles, as usual. His dad never let Oskar win purposely and so until a few years ago his dad had always won easily, even if Oskar got lucky now and again. But now it was more even. Maybe it had to do with him practicing so much with the Rubik's Cube.

The matches could go on over half the page, which was to Oskar's advantage. He was good at keeping in mind places with holes that could be filled if Dad did this or that, mask an offensive as a defense. Tonight it was Oskar who won.

Three matches in a row had now been encircled and marked with an "O" in the middle. Only a little one, where Oskar had been thinking of something else, had a "P" on it. Oskar filled in a cross and got two open fours where his dad could only block one. His dad sighed and shook his head.

"Well, Oskar. Looks like I've met my match."

"Seems like it."

For the sake of the game, his dad blocked the one four and Oskar filled in the other. His dad closed one side of the four and Oskar put a fifth cross on the other side, drew a circle around the whole thing, and wrote a neat "O." His dad scratched his beard and pulled out a new sheet of paper. Held his pen up.

"But this time I'm going to .. ."

"You can always dream. You start."

+

Four crosses and three circles into the match there was a knock at the front door. Shortly thereafter it opened and Oskar could hear thuds from someone stamping the snow off their feet.

"Hello, hello!"

Dad looked up from the paper, leaned back in the chair, and looked out into the hall. Oskar pinched his lips together.

No.

His dad nodded at the new arrival. "Come in."

"Thank you."

Soft thumps from someone walking through the hall with woolen socks on their feet. A moment later Janne came into the kitchen, said: "Oh I see. Well aren't you two having a cozy evening."

Dad gestured toward Oskar. "You've met my boy."

"Sure," Janne said. "Hi Oskar, how's it going?"

"Fine."

Until now. Go away.

Janne thudded over to the kitchen table; the woolen socks had slid down his heels and were fluttering out in front of his toes like deformed flippers. He pulled out a chair and sat down.

"I see you're playing tic-tac-toe."

"Yes, but the boy is too good for me. I can't beat him anymore."

"No. Been practicing in town? Do you dare play against me, then, Oskar?"

Oskar shook his head. Didn't even want to look at Janne, knew what he would see there. Watery eyes, a mouth pulled into a sheep-grin; yes, Janne looked like an old sheep and the blond curly hair only strengthened the impression. One of Dad's "friends" who was Oskar's enemy.

Janne rubbed his hands together, producing a sound like sandpaper, and in the backlight from the hall Oskar could see small flakes of skin fall to the floor. Janne had some kind of skin disease that flared up in the summer that made his face look like a rotten blood orange.

"Well, well. It sure is cozy in here."

You
always
say that. Go away with your revolting face and your old
stale words.

"Dad, aren't we going to keep playing?"

"Of course, but now that we have a guest.. ."

"Go on, play."

Janne leaned back in his chair and looked like he had all the time in the world. But Oskar knew he had lost the battle. It was over. Now it would turn out like always.

Most of all he wanted to scream, break something, most of all Janne, when Dad walked over to the pantry and brought out the bottle, picked up two shot glasses and put them on the table. Janne rubbed his hands so the flakes danced.

"Well, well. What have we here ..."

Oskar looked down at the paper with its unfinished game.

He was going to put his cross there.

But there would be no more crosses tonight. No circles. Nothing. There was a light gurgling sound as Dad poured out the shots. The delicate upside-down cone of glass was filled with transparent liquid. It was so little and fragile in Dad's hand. It almost disappeared. And still it ruined everything. Everything.

Oskar crinkled up the unfinished game and put it in the woodstove. Dad made no protests. He and Janne had started talking about some acquaintance who had broken his leg. Went on to talk about other cases of broken bones that they had experienced or heard about, refilled their glasses.

Oskar stayed where he was in front of the stove, with the doors open, looking at the paper that burst into flames, blackened. Then he got the other games and put them in the fire as well.

Dad and Janne took the glasses and the bottle and moved to the living room. Dad said something to Oskar about '"come and talk a little" and Oskar said "later, maybe." He sat there in front of the stove and stared into the fire. The heat caressed his face. He got up, got the graph paper from the kitchen table, tore unused pages out of it and put them in the fire.

When the whole pad with cover and all was blackened he took the pencils and threw them into the fire as well.

+

There was something uncanny about the hospital at this time of night. Maud Carlberg sat in the reception and looked out over the almost empty entrance hall. The cafeteria and kiosk were closed; only the occasional person came through, like a ghost under this high ceiling. Late at night like this she liked to imagine that it was she and only she who was guarding this enormous building that was Danderyd Hospital. It wasn't true, of course. If there was any kind of a problem she only had to push a button and a night guard would turn up within three minutes. There was a game she liked to play to get these late-night hours to pass. She thought of a profession, a place to live, and the basic outline of a person's background. Perhaps an illness. Then she applied all this in her mind to the next person who approached her at the desk. Often the result was . .. amusing.

For example, she could imagine a pilot who lived on Gotgatan and had two dogs that a neighbor took care of when the pilot was away on his or her flights. The neighbor was secretly in love with the pilot, whose biggest problem was that he or she saw little green men with red caps swimming around in the clouds when he or she was out flying.

OK. Then all she had to do was wait.

Maybe after a while a woman with a ravaged appearance turned up. A female pilot. Had been drinking too much on the sly from those tiny liquor bottles they give you on the planes, had seen the little green men, had been fired. Now she sat at home with her dogs all day. The neighbor was still in love with her, however.

Maud kept going like that.

Sometimes she lectured herself about her game, because it prevented her from taking people seriously. But she couldn't help herself. Right now she was waiting for a minister whose passion was expensive sports cars and who loved picking up hitchhikers with the motive of trying to convert them.

Man or woman? Old or young? How would someone like that look?

Maud rested her chin in her hands and looked toward the front doors. Not a lot of people tonight. Visiting hours were over and new patients who turned up with Saturday-night injuries—mostly alcohol-related in one way or another—were brought to the emergency room.

The revolving doors started to turn. The sports car minister, perhaps. But no, this was one of those cases where she had to give up. It was a child. A waif-like little ... girl, about ten or twelve years old. Maud started to imagine a chain of events that would eventually lead this child to become that minister, but quickly stopped herself. The girl looked unhappy.

She walked over to the large map of the hospital with the color-coded lines marking the routes you had to take to go to this or that place. Few adults could make sense of that map, so how would a child be able to?

Maud leaned forward and said in a low voice: "Can I help you?" The girl turned to her and smiled shyly, went over to the reception. Her hair was wet, the occasional snowflake that had not yet melted shone white against the black. She didn't keep her gaze glued to the floor as children often did in a foreign environment. No, the dark sad eyes stared straight into Maud's as she walked over to the counter. A thought, as clear as though it were audible, flashed through Maud's head.
I
have to give you something. But what?

In her mind, stupidly, she quickly went through the contents of her desk drawers. A pen? A balloon?

The child stopped in front of the counter. Only her neck and head reached over the top of it.

"Excuse me ... I'm looking for my father."

"I see. Has he been admitted here?"

"Yes, although, I don't know for sure . . ."

Maud looked past her at the doors, looked quickly around the hall, and then fixed on the girl in front of her, who was not even wearing a jacket. Only a black knitted turtleneck where drops of water and snowflakes glittered in the light of the reception area.

"Are you all alone here, dear? At this hour?"

"Yes, I... just wanted to know if he is here."

"Let's see about that then, shall we? What's his name?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

The girl bent her head, seemed to be looking for something on the ground. When she straightened her head again the large dark eyes were wet with tears and her lower lip trembled.

"No, he ... But he is here."

"But my dear . . ."

Maud felt as if something in her chest were breaking and tried to take refuge in action; she bent down and took out her roll of paper towels from the lowest desk drawer, pulled off a piece, and handed it over to the girl. At last she was able to give her something, if only a piece of paper.

The girl blew her nose, and dried her eyes in a very ... adult way.

"Thank you."

"But then I don't know ... so what's wrong with him?"

"He is .. . the police took him."

"But then you'd better turn to them."

"Yes, but they're keeping him here. Because he's sick."

"Well, what kind of illness does he have?"