I went into Robin’s room and picked up the hand-written sheet of music from the piano. A horrible feeling had settled in my chest after what Robin had said, and as I stood there with the piece of paper in my hand I had the impression that something was radiating from it. I ran my eyes over the messy notes, the damp patches and the creases and I saw that it was
As I said, I can’t read music, so it must have been something in the way the notes were written, the hand that had guided the pen, the pens. Or perhaps there is a language that transcends the barriers of reason and goes straight in without passing through the intellect.
Whatever the case may be, there was only one sensible thing to do. I took the piece of paper into the kitchen, screwed it up and dropped it in the stove. Robin sat watching from his chair as I struck a match and brought it towards the paper.
I have to admit that my hand was shaking slightly. My sense of the inherent evil in the piece of paper had been so strong that I was afraid something terrible would happen when I set fire to it. But it began to burn just like any other piece of paper. A little yellow flame took hold, flared up, and after ten seconds all that remained were black flakes, torn apart by the draught from the chimney.
I gave a snort of relief and shook my head at my own fantasies. What had I expected — blue flashes, or a demon flying out of the fireplace and running amok in the kitchen? I flung my hands wide like a magician demonstrating that an object really has disappeared.
“There,” I said. “Now you don’t have to play those notes any more.”
I looked at Robin, but the relief I had hoped to see on his face wasn’t there. Instead his eyes filled with tears and he tapped his temples with his fingertips as he whispered: “But I can remember them, Dad. I can
If there’s one expression I can’t stand, it’s
I’m rambling. What I wanted to say was that for once there was a grain of truth in that ugly expression. Later in the evening Robin and I actually played Monopoly. He didn’t want to go back to his room; he preferred to sit beneath the safe circle of the kitchen lamp, moving his little car along the unfamiliar streets of Stockholm.
The wind was whistling around the house and I had lit a fire. The roll of the dice across the board, the soft rustle of well-worn bank notes changing hands, our murmured comments or cries of triumph or disappointment. They were good hours, pleasant hours.
It was half-past ten by the time I found myself bankrupt as a result of Robin’s ownership of Centrum and Norrmalmstorg, with the requisite hotels. As we gathered up the plastic pieces and various bits of paper, Robin said with amazement in his voice, “That was quite good fun!”
I made myself a bed on a mattress on the floor so that Robin could have my bed. I set the alarm for seven as usual and turned off all the lights apart from the lava lamp; I lay there for a long time watching the viscous, billowing shapes until my eyelids began to feel heavy. Then I heard Robin’s voice from the bed.
“Dad?”
I sat up, leaning on my elbow so that I could see him. His eyes were open and in the soft, red light he looked like a small child.
“Yes?”
“I don’t want to play the piano any more.”
“No. I understand.”
“And I don’t want us to keep the piano.”
“Okay. We’ll get rid of it then.”
Robin nodded and curled up, closing his eyes. I lay down on my side and looked at my son. For the second time that day the feeling struck me again: things could all work out, in spite of everything. It might all be okay.
The feeling didn’t diminish when Robin half-opened his eyes and mumbled sleepily: “We can play Monopoly or something. Or cards. So I don’t spend as much time playing computer games.”
“We certainly can,” I said. “Now go to sleep.”
Robin muttered something and after a moment his breathing was deeper. I lay there looking at him, listening to the wind and waiting for it to increase in strength and make the aerial sing. It happened just as my consciousness was about to drift away, and a single long note followed me down into sleep.
Annelie came to me that night.
If it had been a dream, the setting should have been one of the many places where we had actually slept and made love. But she came to me there on the mattress next to the bed. She crept naked under the narrow spare duvet and one thigh slid over mine as she burrowed her nose in the hollow at the base of my throat.
I could smell the scent of her hair as she whispered, “Sorry I went away,” and her dry palm caressed my chest. I pulled her close and held her tight. If I had doubted that this was really happening, my doubts dispersed when she said: “Hey, steady!” because I was squeezing her as hard as I could to prevent her from disappearing again.
“I’ve missed you so much,” I murmured, moving one arm so that I could stroke her belly, her breasts, her face. It really was Annelie. The particular curve of her hips, the birthmark beneath her left breast, all the tiny details imprinted on my mind. Only now did I understand how intense the actual physical longing for this woman had been, this woman whose skin I knew better than my own.
She moved her fingers over my lips and said, “I know. I know. But I’m here now.”
One part of my body had been sure ever since her thigh slid over mine. I was so hard I felt as if I might burst. I pressed her body to mine and as I pushed inside her I couldn’t tell whether the throbbing beats pulsating through me were mine or hers. I followed their rhythm, and the rhythm turned into notes which became a melody that I recognised, and I couldn’t hold back. My body contracted in a convulsion so powerful that I slipped out of her and my seed shot out all over the sheets in a single spasm.
I opened my eyes wide.
I was alone on the mattress. My penis was stiff and I could feel the warm stickiness of my ejaculation, the faint aroma of sperm beneath the covers. But that wasn’t all. Annelie’s scent still lingered in the room. The shampoo she always used, the moisturiser from the Body Shop perfumed with oranges and cinnamon, the one she called her “Christmas moisturiser”. Plus the scent of her own body, but I have no words to describe that. They were there in the room. All of them.
I was so preoccupied with trying to drink in that smell and to remain in the moment that it was a long time before I grasped that the notes were real. That they were being played in the house.
I propped myself up on one elbow and saw that the bed was empty. Robin had got up and gone to the piano.
Something moved in my peripheral vision. A faint, swaying movement. Annelie’s scent was superseded by another. Sweaty feet. Horrible, stinking, sweaty feet. I turned my head slowly to the side and saw a bare foot swinging to and fro next to me. As my gaze travelled upwards I saw that the foot belonged to an equally naked body. A hairy pot belly and flaccid testicles. A head on a broken neck, eyes staring into mine. The hanged man opened his mouth and said:
“Without her. nothing. That’s true, isn’t it? You can get her back. I did. I am happy now.”
I squeezed my eyes tight shut and pressed my wrists against my eyelids so hard that my eyeballs were pushed into my skull and I saw a shower of red stars. I counted to ten, and while I was counting the piano stopped playing. I heard voices coming from Robin’s room. And a faint creaking sound.
I opened my eyes. A long, dirty toenail was swaying to and fro centimetres from my face, and from above I heard the gurgling, muffled voice saying, “The door is open. You just have to—”
A strong impulse made me want to curl up, put my hands over my ears and wait until the madness went away. Perhaps I might even have done it if I hadn’t heard Robin. In a tearful voice he suddenly yelled: “I can’t! I can’t!”
I rolled off the mattress, away from the visitation above my head. I got to my feet and ran to Robin’s room without looking back.
The window was wide open and the room was freezing cold. Robin was standing by the window dressed only
