Europa Blues (12 page)

Despite all that, it wasn’t any old weekend. None of them, not even Viggo Norlander, managed to go an hour without thinking about an utterly peculiar case.

That applied not least to Paul Hjelm. He and his family were out at the summer house in Dalarö. It had been a few years since they first came across the ramshackle old house with a fantastic little beach and its own tumbledown jetty tucked away behind it. The owner was an extremely lively but wheelchair-bound lady who happened to have been Sweden’s first female boxer. Hjelm had never quite been able to work out whether she deliberately ignored the all-embracing rules of the market or whether the market simply hadn’t found its way out there yet. If that was the case, the cabin was the last blank spot on the map. Maja – that was the former boxer’s name – could have easily asked for three or four million, just for the plot. Instead, she rented it to the Hjelm family for seven thousand a year, choosing to stay in her little two-room flat in the centre of Handen. Once a year, she came to visit, spending the night in her old bedroom. As a rule, she usually went out to Dalarö the first weekend in May, before it got – to quote Maja – ‘much too sweaty in the knickers’.

Now she was sitting on the porch, taking deep breaths of the chilly sea air and saying: ‘It really wasn’t easy being a lesbian back then.’

Since every visit involved a new surprise, Paul and Cilla simply glanced at her and waited for her to continue. She did.

‘Yep,’ she said, throwing her strong, crooked arms around the married couple. ‘This is a proper little hotbed of scandal you’re renting here, my children. My, my, my, the orgies we had. Not a bloke as far as the eye could see. Just a horde of skinny-dipping nymphets. The neighbours’ wives were hysterical, though the men didn’t protest too strongly, I can tell you that.’

‘A few of the neighbours’ wives are still alive, I think,’ Paul Hjelm said.

Maja gave a roar of laughter and punched him on the arm. He instinctively knew it would leave a bruise.

‘I always forget you’re a detective,’ she laughed. ‘You don’t look like a detective, Paulus.’

‘I think he does,’ Cilla said in an icy tone.

‘Now now,’ Maja barked, ‘you can save your marital bickering for later. You’ve got guests. I’d love another Dry Martini, by the way. A bit drier this time, if you can.’

‘We’ll have to distil our own then,’ Paul Hjelm said, glaring furtively at Cilla.

He stood up and poured yet another neat Beefeater for Maja, who was roaring with laughter.

‘You’re right, of course,’ she said, slightly more composed now that the drink had been served. ‘Those women seduced the gentlefolk, settled down on their golden estates – and ended up with a group of water nymphs as neighbours. Slightly unexpected when you’ve married into society and have been expecting a traditional family life. As long as any of them are still living, I’m not going to sell. And don’t worry, my children, those old dears are hardy.’

Cilla stood up and started fiddling about with something which absolutely didn’t need fiddling about with. Her back to the table, she said: ‘I’ll tell you why he looks like a detective. It’s because he’s always thinking about a case. He’s never really present.’

‘Sorry for existing,’ Paul said maturely.

‘A case?’ Maja exclaimed blissfully. ‘So exciting! Tell us more, Paulus.’

‘Paulus,’ squawked a faltering voice from inside the cottage.

‘Are the kids here?’ Maja asked in surprise. ‘I thought you said you’d left them in town.’

‘Left them in town,’ the half-stifled voice harped.

Paul Hjelm sighed. ‘I live with a parrot,’ he said, casting a glance at Cilla.

She was still standing with her back to him and mumbled: ‘It must just have woken up.’

‘A real parrot?’ Maja said with distaste. ‘So disgusting.’

‘Isn’t it?’ Paul said weakly.

‘I don’t like animals,’ the old woman continued, slurping her gin like a real sea dog. ‘Something from my childhood. People who’re afraid of animals do exist. Not afraid of snakes or spiders or cows, I mean a general fear of animals – people who panic at the slightest contact with the animal kingdom. It’s quite hard work.’

‘You don’t seem like someone who panics unnecessarily,’ Cilla said, still facing away from them.

‘Panic might be a bit much,’ Maja admitted. ‘But it does exist. The genuine fear of animals. I’ve seen it close up. I brought a little city girl I was in love with out here, must’ve been the late fifties, and when I grabbed a frog from the stream she panicked and screamed and swallowed her tongue. I pulled it back out with the wobbler. A few years later when I saw her again, she said she could still taste raw fish in the back of her throat.’

Paul chuckled, poured a big Beefeater for himself and said: ‘If I wasn’t prevented from talking about the case, I could’ve told you something about a fear of animals.’

‘Fear of animals,’ the parrot croaked from inside the cottage. Paul and Maja laughed. Even Cilla couldn’t stop herself. She laughed, sat down at the table with a thud, poured an enormous drink, took a gulp big enough to have been two large schnapps and said: ‘OK, for God’s sake. I’m revoking your vow of professional secrecy. You might as well just get it out of your system.’

And so Paul Hjelm talked. As darkness fell over Gränöfjärden, transforming the overcast day into a shimmering golden dusk, he told them about drug-addled wolverines and Eastern European whores, about the strange fate of a mobile phone thief and invisible pursuers in Skansen, about a macho woman in a red leather jacket and a particularly inappropriate manager of a refugee centre. Maja listened raptly, almost falling from her wheelchair on several occasions. Every now and then she added comments that were sometimes wanton, sometimes wise. The most stimulating thing was that even Cilla seemed to be listening, not just because she was slightly drunk and tired, not just because she had promised, but because she was genuinely interested in what he was saying.

When he finished, the sun was still hovering just above the surface of the water. Paul took Cilla’s hand and Maja said: ‘Go down to the jetty a while, you two, drink in the atmosphere. I’m going to turn in.’

‘Can you manage it yourself?’ Cilla asked.

Maja placed a hand on top of theirs.

‘I’ll lie on the floor and wait, if the worst comes to the worst. I’ve done it before.’

They went down to the water. The jetty, which had suddenly gained a sinful past, stretched out into a glittering, orange-coloured glow, like the old black wreck of a ship in a romantic painting. Since there wasn’t a breath of air in the bay, as far out as the horizon, and since a Dry Martini or two had lined their throats, the May evening didn’t feel particularly cold.

When they reached the jetty, Cilla slowly took off her clothes, piece by piece, calmly and naturally, until she was standing naked in the deep orange light. Paul’s thoughts started dancing. He looked at her slim, blonde body, surrounded by light; the body which had, by and large, shaped his entire sexuality. There stood the mother of his two children, each of whom was now old enough to have children of their own. And she looked young. Eternally young.

She slowly and sensually ran her hands through her messy blonde hair. It was a spring gift, that much he understood. He moved over to her and embraced her. She loosened his clothing, something she hadn’t done for a long time. Eventually, he was as naked as she was and they stood there, entwined, on the ramshackle old jetty, the light gradually fading around them. He lifted her up and she wrapped her legs around him, allowing him to enter her. Darkness fell. She pulled back, hovering above him, and then took him in again, as deep as she could, and then he pulled out and lay down on his back on top of the clothes they had strewn on the jetty. She slowly lowered herself onto him, surrounding him, and something bigger than the two of them united them.

She rode him in time with the rhythmic noise of the small waves hitting the shore, waves caused only by the movement of the jetty on the mirror-calm water. The earth seemed to rise up, seemed desperate to move closer, seemed to push up towards them, and the dark sky sank down and down until it was perforated by bright spot after bright spot, and the light from another, underlying, better world drove wedges into the blackness, coming closer and closer and rising and falling, and with sound and movement and patterns spreading over the surface of the water, the moon casting a thin layer of light into the darkness, a jetty of light which carried them over to the better world; they entered into it and it smiled at them; all was light and glimmering and ultimately a powerful beam which spoke of something else, something better, existing here and now, and all sounds were just rhythms, streaming through the holes and openings in the heavens’ dark blanket of light which spurted and came and emptied and exploded in sound which was light and light which was sound, and then it was all over.

After that it was very, very still on the little jetty.

A phone rang.

Their faces were joined. They didn’t see one another, simply felt one another. He shook his head slowly and she nodded.

She was the one who nodded.

In her nodding was a deep, deep insight; he felt that as he rifled through the pile of clothes and answered his phone.

He didn’t say a word. All she heard was the faint click when he ended the call.

‘Your story wasn’t quite over, was it?’ she asked, stroking his cheek.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t.’

FOR FIVE DAYS
now, he had been travelling. It felt like a lifetime. In a way, it was. But now he understood that his wandering was coming to an end. A transformation was about to take place.

The presence was stronger now. It had started to feel more physical, like an old friend he had been waiting for for a long time. More than fifty years. Two old, very old men, meeting one another halfway, each from their own side of a page covered with scribbles. It was as though he was about to arrive, to come home.

And someone was waiting for him there.

Waiting with unswerving loyalty.

It was all pictures now. They were rippling through him. It was the river of death; he needed to evoke them to be able to cross, to be given permission to die. All he needed now was a ferryman. That was who was waiting for him. That was who would guide him to the other side. He wouldn’t stop until he reached the bottom of the funnel. Though anything was better than wandering, being forever unburied on the banks of a river which didn’t exist. The wandering of Ahasver. But now the river was there. The eternal suffering could begin.

He was looking forward to it.

Every now and then, he managed to look up from the flood of images. To catch his breath. A chance to recall his route during those five days. Each day’s travel formed a letter. The first had been ‘E’, an upper-case ‘E’. The second day’s journey was a ‘P’, that was what he had worked out.

The images were relentless. There wasn’t much time to look up. The tidal wave washed over him but the story failed to emerge. The pictures didn’t fit together. There was no order to it. As soon as any kind of order appeared, he would be ready. Then he would no longer need to travel.

There were arms on top of him, legs on top of him, thin, thin legs, thin, thin arms. He was moving through a pile of people. Dead people. One of the dead people is a man without a nose and he is lying on the floor of a living room in Tyresö; a hand clutching a kitchen knife pulls back and the blood flows from beneath the man without a nose, and on the wrist by the knife there are numbers in movement, on their way away from him.

He is upside down and a metal wire is being forced into his temple and he feels no pain, though he should be feeling pain beyond all comprehension. He isn’t the one who is upside down, it’s the man waiting with unswerving loyalty, on the banks created by the river of death. The book he is writing talks of pain, of pain, pain, pain, where does it go? Where does it come from? Is he the one writing his own book?

He opens the outer door of his house, and there stands a man without a nose, and then the man without a nose is lying dead in front of him. He sees an extremely pale man in uniform. The extremely pale man in uniform is holding a thin metal wire in his hand. Beside the pale man is another, darker man. He has a purple birthmark on his neck. In the shape of a rhombus. Behind both men, bathed in a strange, artificial light, he sees a third man, and the third man also has a thin metal wire in his hand, and he should see him, but he doesn’t. On his wrist, the numbers are on their way away. The man without a nose says ‘Sheinkman’, and he is standing completely still and watching him, and the man without a nose says ‘Sheinkman’ once more, and this time he points to himself and cracks into an enormous smile which covers his entire face, and then he comes up out of the river and sees that the metro station is Sandsborg.

He was close now. The day’s route is clear to him. A ‘U’. Today, he travelled in the shape of a ‘U’. The last letter. How did he travel yesterday? He would have to go in and travel through the previous day again. Slowly, it became a symbol. A letter.

As the train left the station, he realised that it was no longer moving through tunnels. It was out in the daylight. Though it was night now, so there wasn’t much light. They were heading towards the night, he thought, feeling the presence with great clarity. Death was sitting beside him, travelling with him, and it was an entirely ordinary person.

But then it broke up – death’s outline broke up. Why? Can’t he die now either? Or wasn’t it death pursuing him? Was it some other being?

Everything was impenetrable again.

A muddle. Arms, a man without a nose, three men with a light behind them, numbers on the move, a thin metal wire, an upside-down face, a book being written in, legs, thin, thin legs, a stench beyond all comprehension.

Yesterday’s letter was a ‘V’. As the train came to a halt at Skogskyrkogården station and he stepped onto the platform with shaking, unsteady legs, that much was utterly clear to him. It was obvious. He has been following an internal map.