My Struggle: Book 2: A Man in Love (42 page)

‘Fleetingly,’ I said. ‘At Mosebacke last year. You introduced them to me as though they were a couple of chimps.’

‘We were more like the chimps, I imagine,’ Geir said. ‘Well, anyway. Osman. He attacked a Securicor van in Farsta with an accomplice. The place they chose was
fifty
metres from the main police HQ. So when they were a bit ham-fisted at the beginning and the crew managed to set off the alarm the police were there in seconds! Then they bundled themselves into their car and drove off without the money or anything. And ran out of petrol! Ha ha ha!’

‘Is that possible? It sounds like the Olsen band.’

‘Right. Ha ha ha!’

‘So how is Osman? Armed robbery is not exactly a minor offence.’

‘It wasn’t too bad. He was given a couple of years, that was all. But his pal had so much previous that he’ll be in for a long stretch.’

‘Has this just happened?’

‘No, no, no. It was a few years ago. A long time before he started a career as a boxer.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘Some cognac?’

Both Geir and Anders nodded. I opened the bottle and filled three glasses.

‘Any of you like some?’ I asked, looking towards the sofa. A shaking of heads.

‘I might have a tiny drop, please,’ Helena said. As she walked across the floor towards us the music began to pour out of the ridiculously small speakers behind her. It was Damon Albarn’s
Mali
CD, which we had played earlier in the evening and she had utterly fallen for.

‘There you are,’ I said, passing her a glass with the golden-brown liquid just covering the bottom. The light from the lamp hanging above the table made it glow.

‘There’s one thing I’m happy about anyway,’ Christina said from the sofa. ‘And that’s being an adult. It’s sooo much better being thirty-two than twenty-two.’

‘You are aware you’ve got a teddy bear on your lap, Christina, are you?’ I said. ‘Somehow that undermines what you just said.’

She laughed. It was wonderful to see her laugh. There was something tight-lipped about her, not in a dark way, more as though she was using every ounce of strength to keep everything, also herself, together. She was tall and slim, always well dressed, of course, in a self-willed way, and beautiful with her pale skin and freckles, but after the first impressions had passed there was this slight closed-ness that emerged and etched itself in my thoughts about her, at least that was how it had been for me. And yet there was something childlike about her, especially when she laughed or became excited and her self-restraint was overcome. Not childlike as in immature, but childlike as in playful and unrestrained. I saw some of the same in my mother the rare times she let go and did something uninhibited or hasty, for in her too a natural response was indistinguishable from vulnerability. Once we had been up at Geir and Christina’s for a meal. As usual Christina put all her energy and concentration into the cooking. I had been alone in the living room, in the dim light behind the bookshelves, when she came in to get something. She didn’t know I was there. With the voices and the noise of the fans behind her in the kitchen, she smiled to herself. Her eyes were sparkling. Oh, I was so happy when I saw that, but sad too, because she had not intended anyone to see how much it meant to her that we were there.

On one of the mornings when I was staying with them Christina had been washing up in the kitchen while I sat at the table drinking coffee, and she suddenly pointed to the pile of plates and dishes in the cupboard.

‘When we moved in together I bought eighteen of everything,’ she said. ‘I envisaged us having big parties here. Loads of friends and wonderful meals. But we’ve never used them. Not once!’

Geir laughed aloud from the bedroom. Christina smiled.

That was them. That was how they were.

‘But I agree,’ I said now. ‘The twenties were hell. Adolescence was worse. But the thirties are OK.’

‘What’s changed then?’ Helena asked.

‘When I was twenty what I had, what made me me, was so little. I didn’t know that of course because that was all there was at that time. But now I’m thirty-five there’s more. Well, everything that existed in me when I was twenty is still there. But now it’s surrounded by so much more. That’s sort of how I think about it.’

‘That’s an incredibly optimistic view,’ Helena said. ‘That things get better the older you are.’

‘Is it?’ Geir said. ‘Surely the less you have, the simpler it is to live?’

‘Not for me at any rate,’ I said. ‘Now things don’t mean as much as they did before. Trivialities could mean everything! They could be all-decisive!’

‘That’s true,’ Geir said. ‘But I still wouldn’t call it optimistic. Fatalistic, yes.’

‘What happens, happens,’ I said. ‘And now we’re here.
Skål
to that, I say.’

‘
Skål!
’

‘Seven minutes till midnight,’ Linda said. ‘Shall we put on the TV and watch Jan Malmsjö’s countdown?’

‘What’s that?’ I asked, going over and proffering my hand. She grabbed it and I pulled her to her feet.

‘He reads poems. The bells chime. It’s a Swedish tradition.’

‘Put it on then,’ I said.

While she was doing that I went over to open the windows. The noise of fireworks was growing steadily, now the bangs, crackles and whizzes were non-stop, a wall of sound above the rooftops. The streets were thick with people. Champagne bottles and sparklers in hand, warm coats and capes over festive outfits. No children, just happy, drunken adults.

Linda fetched the last bottle of champagne, opened it and filled the glasses full with effervescent foam. Holding them, we stood by the windows. I watched the others. They were happy, excited, talking, pointing,
skål
-ing.

Outside, sirens sounded.

‘Either war has broken out or 2004 has started,’ Geir said. I put out my arms and held Linda to me. We looked into each other’s eyes.

‘Happy New Year,’ I said and kissed her.

‘Happy New Year, my darling prince,’ she said. ‘This is our year.’

‘Yes, it is,’ I said.

After all the hugs and congratulations were over and people had started to withdraw from the streets, Anders and Helena remembered their sky lantern. We put on our coats and went down to the backyard. Anders lit the wick, the lantern slowly filled with hot air and when, at length, he let go it began to rise alongside the house, glowing and silent. We followed it until it vanished over Östermalm’s rooftops. Back upstairs, we sat round the table again. Conversation was more sporadic and less concentrated now, but occasionally it focused on one point, such as when Linda talked about the posh party she had been to when she was a pupil at
gymnas
, in a grand house with a large swimming pool behind which there was an enormous glass partition. During the course of the evening they had swum and as she kicked off from the partition to dive into the water it shattered and smashed into a million tinkling pieces.

‘I’ll never forget that sound,’ she said.

Anders talked about a trip to the Alps – he had been skiing off-piste and suddenly the ground had opened beneath him. Still wearing his skis, he had fallen down a crevasse in a glacier, perhaps six metres, and lost consciousness. He was rescued by a helicopter, he had broken his back, paralysis was feared and he was operated on at once; for weeks he lay in hospital while his father, he told us, sometimes sat in the chair next to him, as if in a dream, reeking of alcohol.

Then he got to his feet, leaned forward and pulled his shirt up so that we could see the long scar on his back from the operation.

When I was seventeen, I told them, we had been doing a hundred kilometres an hour in the frozen wastes of Telemark and a tyre had burst, we had bounced off a telephone pole, flown over a road and landed in a ditch, escaping serious injury by some miracle, but the car was a total write-off. However, the worst had not been the accident but the cold, it was minus twenty, the middle of the night, we were wearing T-shirts, jackets and trainers after an Imperiet gig and stood on the roadside for hours without getting a lift.

I refilled the glasses with cognac for Anders, Geir and myself, Linda yawned, Helena began a story about Los Angeles, then a shrill alarm went off somewhere in the building.

‘What the hell’s that?’ Anders said. ‘The fire alarm?’

‘Well, it is New Year’s Eve,’ Geir said.

‘Should we go out?’ Linda wondered, sitting up on the sofa.

‘I’ll go and check first,’ I said.

‘I’ll join you,’ Geir said.

We stepped into the corridor. There was no smoke anyway. The sound was coming from the ground floor so we hurried down the stairs. The light above the lift was flashing. I leaned forward and looked through the window in the door. Someone was lying on the floor inside. I opened the door. It was the Russian. She was on her back with one foot against the wall. She was in party clothes, a black dress with some sequins on the chest, skin-coloured tights and high heels. She laughed when she saw us. Instinctively, I looked at her thighs and the black panties between them before shifting my gaze to her face.

‘I can’t stand up!’ she said.

‘We’ll give you a hand,’ I said. I grabbed one arm and pulled her into a sitting position. Geir went to the other side and between us we managed to get her upright. She was laughing all the time. The stench of perfume and alcohol in the confined space was overpowering.

‘
Tack så mycket
,’ she said in Swedish. Then
Tusen, tusen takk
, in Norwegian.

She took my hands in hers, bent forward and kissed them, first one, then the other. Then she peered up at me.

‘Oh, what a good-looking man,’ she said.

‘Come on and we’ll help you to your flat,’ I said. Pressed the button for her floor and closed the door. Geir was grinning from ear to ear as he glanced from her to me. As the lift started its ascent she slumped against me.

‘So,’ I said. ‘Here we are. Have you got the key?’

She looked into the little bag she wore over her shoulder, swaying to and fro like a tree in the wind as her fingers rummaged through the contents.

‘Here it is!’ she exclaimed triumphantly, producing a bunch of keys.

Geir held an arm against her shoulder as she toppled forward with the key pointing to the lock.

‘Take a step forward,’ he said. ‘And you’ll be fine.’

She obeyed. After some fumbling she succeeded in getting the key into the lock.

‘
Tusen takk
!’ she thanked us again. ‘You’re two angels who have come to my aid this evening.’

‘Not at all,’ Geir said. ‘And good luck.’

On our way upstairs to the flat Geir sent me a quizzical look.

‘Was that your crazy neighbour? he asked.

I nodded.

‘She’s a prostitute, isn’t she?’

I shook my head.

‘Not as far as I know,’ I said.

‘She must be, you know. She couldn’t afford to live here otherwise. And her appearance . . . She didn’t look stupid though.’

‘That’s enough,’ I said, opening the door to the flat. ‘She’s like any woman. Just very unhappy, an alcoholic and Russian. With an impulse-control disorder.’

‘Yes, you can say that again.’ Geir laughed.

‘What was it?’ Helena asked from the living room.

‘That was our Russian neighbour,’ I said, going in. ‘She’d fallen over in the lift and was so drunk she couldn’t get up. So we helped her to her flat.’

‘She kissed Karl Ove’s hands,’ Geir said. ‘“Oh, what a good-looking man,” she said!’

Everyone laughed.

‘And that’s after she’s stood here swearing and cursing at me,’ I said. ‘And driven us mad.’

‘It’s a nightmare,’ Linda said. ‘She’s totally out of it. When I walk past her on the stairs I’m almost afraid she’ll pull out a knife and stab me. She glares at me with hatred in her eyes, doesn’t she? Deep hatred.’

‘Time’s slowly running out for her,’ Geir said. ‘Then you move in with a bulging belly and impending bliss.’

‘Is that it, do you think?’ I asked.

‘Of course,’ Linda said. ‘If only we’d kept our distance at the beginning. But we were open with her. Now she’s obsessed by us.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ I said. ‘Anyone up for some dessert? Linda’s made her famous tiramisu.’

‘Oh!’ said Helena.

‘If it’s famous it’s because it’s the only dessert I can make,’ Linda said.

I fetched it and the coffee, and we sat at the table again. No sooner had we done so than the music blared out from the flat below.

‘This is how we live,’ I said.

‘Can’t you get her thrown out?’ Anders asked. ‘If you want I can fix it for you.’

‘And how does that work?’ Helena asked.

‘I have my methods,’ Anders replied.

‘Oh yes?’ Helena said.

‘Report her to the police,’ Geir said. ‘Then she’ll realise it’s serious.’

‘Do you mean that?’ I said.

‘Of course. If you don’t do something drastic it’ll just go on and on.’

The music stopped as abruptly as it had started. The door below slammed. Heels click-clacked on the stairs.

‘Is she going to come here?’ I said.

Everyone sat still, listening. But the footsteps passed our door and continued up the stairs. Soon after, they returned and faded as they went down. I crossed to the window and looked below. Wearing only the dress and one shoe, she staggered into the white carriageway. She waved, a taxi was approaching. It stopped and she clambered in.

‘She’s taking a taxi,’ I said. ‘Wearing one shoe. Can’t fault her for effort, anyway.’

I sat down and the conversation drifted into other areas. At around two Anders and Helena made a move to go, wrapped themselves up in their thick winter clothes, hugged us and headed off into the night, Anders with his sleeping daughter in his arms. Geir and Christina left half an hour later, Geir, after returning with a high-heeled shoe in his hand.

‘Like a second Cinderella,’ he said. ‘What shall I do with it?’

‘Leave it outside her door,’ I said. ‘And be off with you now, we need to sleep.’

When I went into the bedroom, after tidying up the living room and putting on the dishwasher, Linda was asleep. But not so soundly that she was unable to open her eyes and send me a drowsy smile as I undressed.