Handling the Undead (16 page)

Maybe Mahler's happiness was not so much to do with the sign of life in Elias, as with the fact that he was able to do something for him. He did not have to stand there at a loss and simply look at him. He could apply lotion to his body, he could give him something to drink. Maybe there were more things he could do, time would tell. Now ...

Heady with his success, he took the glass again and brought it to Elias' lips. But he poured it too fast and it ran out again. Elias' throat did not move.

'Wait ... wait .. .'

Mahler ran out into the kitchen and found a small plastic syringe that had come with a bottle of medicine he had bought the last time Elias had a fever. He filled the syringe with salt water from the glass and slowly squeezed ten mils of liquid between Elias' lips. He swallowed. Mahler continued until the syringe was empty. Then he refilled it. After ten minutes Elias had drunk the whole glass and Mahler lowered his wet head against the pillows.

There was no visible difference, but whatever Elias was now, it had a will, or at least an impulse to take something in from the external world ...

Mahler tucked Elias into bed, and lay down beside him.

Elias still stank, but the bath had removed the worst of it. The remaining smell was now mixed up with the scent of soap and shampoo. Mahler

leaned his head against the pillow and narrowed his eyes, trying to see his grandchild, but it didn't work. The soft profile was competely altered by the jutting cheekbones, the sunken nose, the lips.

He isn't dead. He exists. It will be fine ...

 Mahler fell asleep.

The clock on the bedside table said half past ten when he was awakened by the telephone. His first thought was: Anna!

He hadn't spoken with her; maybe she had already had time to go to the graveside. He glanced quickly at Elias who was lying exactly as he had left him, then grabbed the phone on his side of the bed.

'Yes, this is Mahler.'

'It's me. Anna.'

Fucking hell. Idiot. How could he have slept? Anna's voice sounded shredded, trembling. She had been out to Racksta, Mahler lowered his legs over the side of the bed, sat up.

'Yes ... hi there. How are you?'

'Daddy. Elias is gone.' Mahler drew in air in order to tell her, but did not get a chance before Anna continued, 'Two men were just here and asked me if I. .. if I had ... Daddy, there has .. .last night ... there are dead people who have come back to life.'

'What kind of men?'

'Daddy, do you hear what I'm saying?
Do you hear what I'm saying!
' Her voice was hysterical, about to escalate into a scream. 'Dead people have come back to life and Elias ... they said that his grave ... '

'Anna, Anna. Calm down. He is here.' Mahler looked at Elias' head resting on the pillow, touched his forehead with his hand. 'He is here. With me.'

There was silence on the other end. 'Anna?'

'He ... is alive? Elias? Are you saying that ... '

'Yes. Or rather ... ' there was a rattling sound on the line. 'Anna?

Anna?' Through the receiver, in the distance, he heard a door open and close.

Damn it ...

He got up, groggy. Anna was on her way over. He had to ...

What did he have to do?

Lessen, soften ...

The blinds in the bedroom were lowered, but that was not enough to conceal Elias' appearance. Quickly, Mahler took a blanket out of the closet and hung it over the curtain rod. Some light came in through the crack on the side, but it was significantly darker.

Should I light a candle? No, then it will be like a wake.

'Elias? Elias?'

No reply. With trembling hands, Mahler drew up the very last water from the glass into the syringe, brought it to Elias' lips. Perhaps his eyes were playing tricks on him now that it was so dark, but Elias did not only swallow, Mahler even thought he moved his lips a little in order to take in the syringe.

He had no time to reflect on this because the front door opened at the bottom of the stairs and he walked out into the hall in order to meet Anna. Ten seconds during which his thoughts whirled, then the doorbell rang. He breathed in and opened.

Anna was only dressed in a T-shirt and panties. No shoes.

'Where is he? Where is he?'

She forced her way into the apartment but he got hold of her, restrained her. 'Anna .. .listen to me for a moment ... Anna .. .'

She squirmed in his grip, cried, 'Elias!' and tried to free herself. With all the strength he could muster he shouted:

'ANNA! HE IS DEAD!'

Anna stopped struggling, stared at him in confusion. Her eyelids

twitched and her lips quivered.

'Dead? But ... but ... you said ... they said ... '

'Can you just listen to me for one second?'

Anna suddenly went limp, would have fallen down in a heap on the floor if Mahler had not caught her and set her down in the chair next to the phone. Her head turned from side to side as if by an invisible power. Mahler placed himself in front of her, blocking the way between her and the bedroom, leaned down and took her hand in his.

'Anna. Listen to me. He lives ... but he is dead.'

Anna shook her head, pressed her hands to her temples.

'I don't understand I don't understand what you are saying I don't .. .'

He took her head between his hands, twisting it with some force to meet his eyes.

'He has been in the ground for a month. He doesn't look like he did before. Not at all. He looks ... pretty awful.'

'But how can he ... he must .. .'

'Anna, I don't know. No one knows anything. He doesn't speak.

He doesn't move. It is Elias, and he is alive. But he is very changed. He is ... as if dead. Maybe there is something that can be done, but ... '

'I want to see him.'

Mahler nodded. 'Yes, of course you do. But you have to prepare yourself for ... try to prepare yourself for. .. '

For what? How can one prepare oneself for something like this?

Mahler took a step back. Anna remained seated.

'Where is he?'

'In the bedroom.'

Anna pressed her lips together, leaning forward a little so she could see the bedroom door. She had collected herself. Now she seemed afraid instead. Fumbling with her hand in the direction of the door, she asked, 'Is he ... broken?' Her eyes looked at Mahler, pleading. He shook his head.

'No. But he has ... dried up. He is ... blackened.'

Anna clasped her hands tightly in her lap.

'Was it you who ... '

'Yes.'

She nodded, said flatly, 'They were wondering,' and stood up, walking toward the bedroom. Mahler followed, half a step behind. In his thoughts he went through the contents of the medicine drawer, if he had anything tranquilising in case Anna ... No. He had nothing like that. Only his words, his hands. Whatever help they might be.

She did not collapse. She did not scream. She quietly approached the bed and looked at what was lying there. Sat down on the bed. After sitting there for a minute looking without saying anything, she asked, 'Would you please go out for a while?'

Mahler backed out and shut the door on them. Stood outside, listening. After a while he heard something that sounded like an injured animal. A drawn-out, monotone whimper. He bit his knuckles, but did not open the door.

Anna came out after five minutes. Her eyes were red, but she was calm. She closed the door gently behind her. Now Mahler was the one getting nervous. He had not expected this. Anna walked out and sat down on the couch. Mahler followed, sitting down next to her and taking her hand.

'How is it?'

Anna stared at the dark television screen. Her gaze was without expression. She said, 'It isn't Elias.'

Mahler did not answer. A pain that started in his heart region radiated out along his shoulder, the arm. He leaned back against the cushions, trying to will his heart to be still, stop fluttering. His face was contorted in a grimace of pain when a hot hand gripped his heart, squeezed and .. .let go. His heart took up its usual rhythm. Anna had not noticed anything. She said, 'Elias doesn't exist any longer.'

'Anna ... I,' Mahler panted.

Anna nodded at her own statement, adding, 'Elias is dead.'

'Anna, I'm ... sure that it is ... '

'You misunderstand me. I know that it is Elias' body. But Elias no longer exists.'

Mahler did not know what to say. The pain in his arm subsided, leaving behind a peace, the calm after a successful battle. He closed his eyes, said, 'What do you want to do?'

'Take care of him, of course. But Elias is gone. He lives in our memories. That's where he should be. Nowhere else.'

Mahler nodded, said, 'Yes ... '

Meant nothing by it.

Solna 08.45

The taxi driver had spent the night transporting patients from Danderyd and was talking about how stupid people were. Scared of the dead in the way they'd be scared of ghosts, when that was not the problem. The problem was
bacteria.

Take a dead dog in a well. After three days the water is so toxic that you'd be risking your life to drink it. Or take the war in Rwanda: tens of thousands dead, sure, but that in itself wasn't the great tragedy. It was water. Corpses had been tossed into the rivers and then even more had died from lack of drinking water, or from drinking what was there.

The bacteria the corpses brought with them. There was the real danger.

David noted that the driver had a box of tissues attached to the control panel under the meter. He did not know if what the man was saying was true, but the very fact that he believed it ...

He stopped listening when the man started to talk about the meteorite from Mars that had landed four years ago. The guy was clearly obsessed, and David paid no attention to the rigmarole about secret test results that had been concealed from the public.

Were they planning to perform an autopsy on her? Had they already done it?

When they arrived at the Karolina Institute campus the driver asked for a more specific address, and David said, 'The Medical Examiner's Department.'

The driver looked at him. 'Do you work there, or what?'

'No.'

'Lucky for you.'

'Why?'

The driver shook his head and said in the tone of one confiding a secret, 'Let me put it this way ... they're a fairly cuckoo lot, some of them.' When David stepped out of the car outside a mundanelooking brick building, the driver looked at him and said, 'Good luck' before driving away.

David went up to the reception and explained his business. The receptionist, who did not appear to have the least idea what he was talking about, made various calls and eventually found the right person. She asked David to have a seat and wait.

The waiting room consisted of a couple of vinyl-covered chairs.

These surroundings conjured up a feeling of anxiety in him and just as he was about to get up and wait in the parking lot, someone came through the glass doors that led to the inner region.

Without having thought about it, David had expected a giant of a man in a blood-spattered apron. But it was a woman who came toward him. A small woman in her fifties with short, greying hair, and blue eyes behind enormous glasses. No blood on the white coat. She stretched out her hand.

'Hello. Elisabeth Simonsson.'

David took her hand. Her grip was firm and dry. 'David. I. .. Eva Zetterberg is my wife.'

'Oh. I see. I am terribly ... '

'Is she here?'

'Yes.'

Despite his determination, David grew nervous under the

scrutinising gaze she directed at him, as if searching his innards for the trace of a crime. He crossed his arms over his chest to shield himself.

'I want to see her.'

'I'm sorry. I understand how you must-feel. But it's out of the question.'

'Why?'

'Because we are in the process of ... examining her.'

David grimaced. He had caught the brief pause in front of the word 'examining'. She had been planning to say something else. He balled his hands into fists, said, 'You can't do that to her!'

The woman tilted her head. 'What do you mean?'

David waved his arms toward the doors the woman had come out of, towards the ... wards. 'You can't bloody do an autopsy on someone who is still alive!'

The woman blinked and then did something that David had not been expecting. She burst into laughter. Her little face unfolded in a network of laugh lines that quickly disappeared again. The woman waved her hand, said, 'Excuse me,' pressed her glasses back onto the bridge of her nose arid went on, 'I understand that you are ... but you shouldn't be concerned.'

'Oh really, then what are you doing?'

'Exactly what I said. We are examining her.'

'But why are you doing it here?'

'Because ... well, for example, I'm a toxicologist, that is, a specialist in detecting foreign substances in dead bodies. We are examining her under the assumption that something has, so to speak, been introduced. Something that should not be present. Exactly as we do in the case of suspected murder.'

'But you ... cut people up here. Under normal circumstances.'

The woman wrinkled her nose at this description of her place of work, but nodded and said, 'Yes, we do. Because we have to. But in this case ... we also have access to equipment that does not exist elsewhere. That can be used even when we are not ... cutting people up.'

David sat down on the vinyl chair, cradled his head in his hands.

Foreign substances ... something that has been introduced. He did not understand what they were looking for. He only knew one thing.

'I want to see her.'

'In case it's any comfort to you,' her voice softened somewhat, 'you should know that all of the reliving have been isolated. Until we know more. You are not the only one.'

The corners of David's mouth twitched. 'The bacteria, right?'