Shame (6 page)

Maj-Britt dropped the letter to the floor. From the depths of everything she had forgotten, the nausea came rushing in like a berserker. She wrenched herself up out of the easy chair but made it no further than the hall before she threw up.

Y
ou’re a doctor. You can handle this. Tell them anything!

Twenty-three expectant faces were turned to her. Monika’s mind was a blank. Only one memory erupted like a boil from the nothingness and made all invented fantasies impossible. The seconds passed. Someone smiled encouragingly and someone else sensed her torment and chose to look away.

‘If you like we can skip to the next person now and you can speak later. If you would rather think about it for a while, that is …’

The woman gave her a friendly smile, but being pitied was more than Monika could stand. Twenty-three people were thinking at that moment that she was weak. If there was anything she had devoted her life to, it was to being regarded as the exact opposite of that. And she had succeeded. She heard it often. How colleagues on the job said that she was so capable. Now she was sitting with twenty-three unknown people and had just been granted special treatment because of her weakness. Everyone in the room viewed her as an ordinary, second-rate person, incapable of carrying out the task that Mattias had executed in such a brilliant manner. The need to reclaim her position was so strong that it succeeded in conquering her indecision.

‘I only hesitated because the memory I thought of also dealt with an accident.’

Her voice was steady and deliberately a bit indulgent. Everyone’s gaze turned back to her. Even those who had turned away in discreet sympathy.

The woman who was subjecting her to this had the bad taste to smile.

‘It doesn’t matter. The point was for all of you to free-associate, and often it’s the strongest experiences that come up first. Please, tell us whatever you like.’

Monika swallowed. Now there was no turning back. All that remained were tiny corrections to the truth if she couldn’t bear it.

‘I was fifteen years old and my big brother Lasse was two years older. He was invited to a party at his girlfriend Liselott’s house while her parents were away, and since I had a small crush on one of his friends who was going too, I managed to convince him to let me come along.’

She was aware of her own heartbeat and wondered if anyone else could hear it.

‘Liselott lived some distance away, so we decided to sleep over. Our mother probably wasn’t entirely aware of what went on at parties like this, that we drank a lot, I mean. And even if she suspected it, she wouldn’t have thought that my brother and I would be involved. She had quite a high opinion of us.’

There was no danger yet. So far it was possible to meander cautiously alongside the truth.

Because so far, it was possible to live with it.

‘Some of the kids took a sauna that night. Quite a lot of drinking was going on, and afterwards no one shut off the sauna heater.’

She paused. She remembered it so well. She even
remembered Liselott’s voice although it was so long ago now and she never heard it after that night.
Monika,
could you go down and turn off the sauna?
And she had said yes, but all that beer was whirling round in her head and the boy she had had a secret crush on for so long was finally showing some interest and she’d promised to wait there on the stairs while he was in the bathroom.

‘Then all of us who were staying over decided to go to sleep. There were three others besides Lasse and me. We slept wherever there was room to lie down, on sofas and beds and everywhere. Lasse slept upstairs in Liselott’s room and I was downstairs.’

Her newly won boyfriend had gone home. Lasse had already fallen asleep in Liselott’s room. Monika, dizzy with infatuation and beer, went to lie down on the sofa right outside their closed door.

On the second floor.

On the hallway at the top of the stairs.

She had never admitted to anyone where she had slept that night.

‘I woke up around four, I think, because I couldn’t breathe, and when I opened my eyes the house was already in flames.’

The terror. The panic. The terrific heat. Only one thought. To get out of there. Two steps over to the closed door but she hadn’t hesitated. She simply rushed down the stairs and left them to their fate.

‘There was smoke everywhere and even though you think you can find your way around a house, it’s a whole different matter when you can’t see a thing.’

The words gushed forth in a desperate attempt to finish this task as quickly as possible and escape.

‘I crept over to the stairs and tried to go up but it
was already burning too fiercely. I tried to scream to wake them but the noise of the fire was deafening. I don’t know how long I stood there by the stairs trying to climb them. Time after time I was forced to retreat a couple of steps and then try again. The last thing I remember is a fireman carrying me out of there.’

She couldn’t go on. To her dismay she could feel herself blushing, felt the colour of shame spreading across her cheeks.

She had stood there in safety outside on the lawn and watched how the heat made the glass in Liselott’s window explode. As if turned to stone, she had slowly but surely realised that he would never get out. That he would remain inside in the trap she had set. She had stood there, alive, and watched the malicious flames destroy the house and those who were left inside. Her handsome, happy big brother who was supposed to be so much braver than she was. Who never would have hesitated to take those two steps to save her life.

Who should have lived instead of her.

And then all the questions. All the answers that even then were distorted by her despair over the truth. She had been sleeping in the living room on the ground floor! Liselott had promised to turn off the sauna heater! Weeks of terror that one of the kids who had gone home might have heard her promise to turn off the sauna or seen her upstairs on the sofa. But her statement was allowed to stand unchallenged, and with time it had become the official story about what happened.

‘What happened to your brother?’

Monika couldn’t get the words out. She hadn’t been able to then either, when her mother came rushing across the lawn with only a robe over her night-gown.
The top floor had collapsed and the firemen did their best to extinguish the flames that refused to be brought under control. Someone had called her and she had rushed out and jumped into her car.

The clearest image that remained in Monika’s mind was her mother’s face when she spat out her question, her eyes wide with terror because of what she already knew but refused to comprehend.

‘Where’s Lasse?’

It was impossible to answer. Impossible to utter the necessary words. It couldn’t be true, and as long as nobody said it, it was still not reality.

She felt her mother’s hands on her shoulders, the fingers making her sick to her stomach as her mother tried to shake an answer out of her.

‘Answer me, Monika! Where is Lars?’

A fireman came to her rescue and it only took him a couple of seconds to say the words that made everything irretrievable, that meant nothing would ever be the same again.

‘He didn’t make it.’

Each syllable slashed down between then and now, irrevocably. The past, so unsuspecting and naïve, was forever sliced away from the future.

And that was when she saw it. She could sense it in her mother’s eyes as she stood there in her night-gown, desperately trying to protect herself from the merciless words. She saw what would become the greatest sorrow in her life, and what she would spend her whole life trying to change.

But never could.

Her mother’s grief over Lasse’s death was deeper than the joy she was able to feel that Monika was still alive.

‘A
nd if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.’

She opened her eyes. It had been her mother’s voice. She pulled her hand close and was disgusted by what she smelled. As soon as she could, she got up and went to the sink in the bathroom, washed herself with soap and let the hot water rinse away the sickening vomit.

It was all Vanja’s fault. Her letter had opened up small channels that Maj-Britt could not control, small trickles of thoughts that she didn’t want to deal with sneaked in, and she wasn’t able to keep them out. As long as the threat had come from the outside she could master it with her old tricks, but now it was coming from inside, and years of defence were levelled, leaving the battlefield wide open.

Impure thoughts.

At an early age they had come to her, she never understood from where, suddenly they were just there inside of her. Crawling like black worms out of her brain and making her want things that were unthinkable. Sinful. Maybe it was Satan tempting her after all, the way they said. She could remember it now, what they had said.

She didn’t want to remember!

Suddenly she was being forced closer and closer to the screen that protected her, and when she got close enough it was possible to make out details on the other side, details that shouldn’t be allowed to exist. Trickle after trickle came seeping through the tiny channels, piecing fragments of memory together into a whole. Fragments that rooted out everything she thought she had managed, once and for all, to forget and leave behind her. Next to the words that Vanja had written they had wound their way into her consciousness. No one would fight by her side this time. Her parents were dead, and their Jesus had abandoned her long ago.

She had prayed and prayed but never managed to share their faith; God had not wanted her prayers. She gave up everything to show her obedience and to be embraced by His love, but He never answered. Never showed her a single word or sign that He was listening, that He saw her struggle and her sacrifice. He silenced her because she was not worthy. He rejected her and left her alone with her filthy thoughts.

She went into the kitchen. There was a little left of the meat she had seared, and she cut off a piece and placed it on her tongue. The meat was seared just on the surface. When she leaned back in bed again she let her saliva soften and warm the morsel of meat before she closed her eyes and swallowed.

A brief moment of pleasure.

Several times she had woken with her hands over her crotch, and the shame she felt was blood-red. Why had she been born in a body with such sick desires?
Why had their God not been able to love her? Why had He punished her parents when she had been willing to sacrifice everything?

One night she hadn’t awakened until it was too late. She had woken up in the midst of her shame.

And her mother had spoken to her in her sleep.

They saw what she had done.

A large hall. She sat on a chair and the water all around her was back. She couldn’t move. There was something wrong with her right leg, something about the leg made it impossible for her to escape. A noise frightened her and she looked up. He was standing right in front of her in a black suit, he was so enormous that she couldn’t even see his face. She wanted to flee, but there was something about her right leg that prevented her. Behind him lay a severely wounded man on the floor, and his white clothes were cut to ribbons. Blood gushed from spike holes in his hands, colouring the water red, and he looked at her and appealed for help.

The voice of the huge man boomed like thunder.

‘Jesus died on the cross for your sins, because your hands seduced you and because of your unclean desire.’

She heard sounds behind her. People had gathered, they were there because of her, because of what she had done. Their eyes burned into the back of her neck.

‘There are three forms of love – our love for God, God’s love for us, and erotic love, which turns us away from God.’

The water was seeping in from all sides. Her parents sat some distance away with their hands folded. They looked up adoringly at the man who was speaking, beseeching him for help.

‘The shame of desire is that it is independent of will. Virtue demands complete control over the body. Do you understand, Maj-Britt?’

Her name echoed between the walls but she could not reply. Something was suffocating her. People behind her whom she could not see were placing their hands on her head.

‘Before the Fall, Adam and Eve could propagate without desire, without the lust that has now been forced upon us; their whole bodies were under the control of the will.’

The water was continuing to rise. The wounded man on the ground vanished beneath the surface and she wanted to rush over and help him, but she couldn’t. Her leg and all those hands held her back. Soon her parents would vanish too; they would drown because of her, because she had forced them in their despair to come here for help.

‘You must learn to cultivate and nurture your relationship with God, to cleanse your filthy soul. A true Christian refrains from the damnation of sexuality. What you have done is a sin; you have strayed from the true path.’

With a mighty noise the walls came crashing down and the room was completely filled with water. Her parents sat quite still in their grief and let the water wash over them. She could no longer breathe, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe.

When she woke up she was lying on her back. She tried to roll over on her side but her body prevented her. The big pillow had slipped onto the floor and she was abandoned, trapped by her own weight. Like a
beetle on its back she tried in vain to regain control, but the strain used up the last oxygen in her lungs. She was going to suffocate. She would die here, outwitted by her own body, the body that all her life had been her prison, both thin and fat. Now it had won. At last it had won what it wanted and conquered her, forced her to yield and give up.

They would find her here. That Ellinor would discover her tomorrow and tell the others that she had died lying in her own bed, suffocated by her own fat.

Shamed forever.

With one last effort she managed to roll over on her side and then fall to the floor with a hard thud. Her left arm was trapped under her but she didn’t feel the pain, only the relief when air found a narrow passage down to her lungs.

Saba barked uneasily and wandered back and forth. Saba. Dear Saba. Her faithful friend who was always there when she needed her. But now Saba could do nothing. Maj-Britt would remain lying here until Ellinor came, but at least she wouldn’t be dead.

The hours passed slowly. Her left arm went to sleep after a while, but she didn’t dare move, didn’t dare risk landing on her back again. Finally she was forced to move. With a minimum of effort she managed to free the blood flow down into her arm. Worse was the pain in the small of her back. The pain that had been throbbing lately; often it hurt so much that she had a hard time moving at all.

She was lucky. Ellinor came early. The clock by the bed showed only a little past ten when she finally heard the key in the door.

‘It’s only me!’

She didn’t reply; Ellinor would find her soon enough. She heard the food bags being laid on the kitchen table and Ellinor saying hello to Saba, who had left her side when the front door opened.

‘Maj-Britt?’

The next moment she was standing in the bedroom doorway. Maj-Britt could see that she was alarmed.

‘Shit, what happened?’

She squatted down by her side but still hadn’t touched her.

‘Jesus, how long have you been lying here like this?’

Maj-Britt couldn’t speak. The humiliation she felt was so deep that her jaws refused to move. Then she felt Ellinor’s hands on her body and it was so ghastly that she wanted to scream.

‘I don’t know if I can manage to get you up. I’ll probably have to call security.’

‘No!’

The threat caused a spurt of adrenaline and Maj-Britt reached her arm up towards the bedstead to try and get a grip.

‘We’ll manage by ourselves. Try to shove the pillow in behind my back.’

Ellinor worked as quickly as she could, and in a moment Maj-Britt was in a half-sitting position. The pain in her lower back made her want to scream, but she gritted her teeth and refused to give up. They kept on going. One pillow after another was forced in and it took them almost half an hour, but they did it. Without the security men and their awful touching. When Maj-Britt sank down in her easy chair, panting, and it was all over, she felt a strange emotion.

She was grateful.

To Ellinor.

She wasn’t required to do that; according to the rules she should have called in security. But Ellinor hadn’t, for her sake and together they had done it.

The words came from deep inside.

‘Thank you.’

Maj-Britt didn’t look at her when she said it, or the words would have stuck in her throat.

Not much was said during the next hour. The feeling that they had suddenly become a team, that their common experience had forced Maj-Britt to lower her guard, felt threatening. She was indebted now, and that could easily be exploited if she didn’t stay on alert. This did not mean that they were friends, far from it. She had Saba, after all, and needed no one else.

She couldn’t face dealing with the bags of food, and she heard Ellinor start to unpack them and open the refrigerator door.

‘Wow, what a lot of food is left.’

‘I can finish eating it all if that would make you feel better.’

She bit her tongue, that wasn’t what she meant to say, but the words had come out by themselves. She regretted saying them, but the mere thought that she wanted to take them back disturbed her. She was indebted. In future that would be intolerable.

Ellinor appeared in the doorway.

‘I was just surprised, that’s all. I mean about the food. You aren’t sick or anything, are you?’

Maj-Britt looked at the letter. That was where it
came from. All she had left unread, and the things she
had
read but had never wanted to see. Not even food soothed her anymore.

‘Is there something you want me to buy for next time?’

‘Meat.’

‘Meat?’

‘Just meat. Forget about the rest of it.’

She was back in her easy chair while Ellinor cleaned around her; Maj-Britt was doing her best to pretend she didn’t exist. She was aware of Ellinor’s worried glances but didn’t care. She knew that she wouldn’t get her wish fulfilled; buying nothing but meat was something that Social Services would never agree to. She had waged a long battle to get any extra rations of food at all, but this would definitely cross the line.

But meat was the only thing that could deaden the thoughts that had now invaded her again.

Ellinor was at the front door when she suddenly turned round and came back.

‘You know, I think I’ll leave you my mobile number on the nightstand by your phone. If it should happen again, I mean.’

She disappeared into the bedroom but came right back.

‘I’ll see you the day after tomorrow then.’

She vanished into the hall and when she opened the front door she called back towards the flat, ‘By the way, I put the earplugs you ordered on the kitchen table. See you!’

Maj-Britt didn’t answer, but to her dismay she felt like crying. A thick lump in her throat made her
frown and she hid her face behind her hand until Ellinor had gone.

Ellinor was puzzling. Maj-Britt could not for the life of her understand the friendliness that never diminished no matter how she behaved. There was every reason to be suspicious, because there must be something that Ellinor was expecting in return. She was like one of those advertising flyers that came through the letter-box, some even printed in type that looked like handwriting, as if it were sent solely to her.
Dear
Inga Maj-Britt Pettersson. We are pleased to make
you this fantastic offer
. The better the deal seemed, the more reason to be suspicious. There was always a catch, carefully concealed in the gush of kindly language; the harder it was to discover, the greater reason for caution. Nothing was ever done out of sheer kindness. There was always a profit motive. That’s how the world worked, and everyone did their best to get a piece of it.

Ellinor was like an advertising flyer.

There was every reason to mistrust her.

She took the picker-upper and reached out for the letter. It had been lying like a magnet there on the desk, waiting for her to capitulate. Now she could no longer resist it. Her hands trembled as she unfolded the rest of the letter.