definitely progress.
His mother and father carried on with the usual shit, and he took no notice whatsoever. They didn’t want him at home anymore, but he thought it worked very well; he liked having his room as a sort of hole to crawl back into from time to time. He didn’t listen to a word they said in any case.
When Jerry was twenty, Elvis went out cruising in Norrtalje, high as a kite. He lost control of his Chevy on the hill leading down to the harbour, drove straight into the water and drowned. Nothing was the same after that.
The steam went out of Roy and Jerry. They felt obliged to burgle a couple of houses, and talked about trying some post offices, but it never happened. It was no fun anymore. They drifted apart, and since Jerry was spending more time at home, he was able to hear Lennart and Laila talking. When they organised an apartment for him through social services, he moved out.
He had a few bits and pieces stashed away which he sold so that he could buy a motorbike. He got a few dead-end jobs, but never stayed more than a couple of weeks. He built up a reasonable collection of splatter films on VHS.
That’s how it was, and perhaps it couldn’t have been any different.
In the spring the year after Lennart had found the girl, something very unusual happened. Laila received an offer. A group calling themselves DDT wanted Laila as their featured singer on a dance track. At first Laila thought it was a joke, and in a way she was right. The idea was to do a Swedish version of The KLF’s monster hit ‘Justified and Ancient’, with Laila as Sweden’s answer to Tammy Wynette, singing a couple of verses to a heavy dance beat.
Laila found out later that both Lill-Babs and Siw Malmkvist had been approached and turned it down. Perhaps other legendary Swedish chart-toppers had been asked too, before they ended up with the somewhat less legendary Laila.
She had no reputation to lose and no image to maintain, so she said yes. Anything to get out of the house.
The atmosphere had soured even more since the incident with Jerry. Lennart hardly spoke to her anymore, but at least he didn’t hit her. It wasn’t clear what Jerry had meant when he said Lennart could ‘forget the kid’ if his instructions weren’t followed, but the threat certainly worked. Jerry got his computer and Laila was left in peace.
But it was as if a musty blanket had settled on things. The air in the rooms felt stale and close. Laila thought that a visitor who stepped through the door would only need one sniff to know:
But nobody came, apart from Jerry who called in from time to time to ‘check things out’. Sometimes he insisted on holding the child, bouncing it up and down on his knee and saying, ‘Toot, toot.’ On these occasions Lennart stood there with clenched fists, waiting until Jerry had finished so he could carry the girl back down to the cellar.
Perhaps Laila experienced the child’s shut-in existence as her own; sometimes she had to go out into the garden just to breathe. So she welcomed the chance to go into Stockholm and pretend to be a singer again, if only for a while.
The track was called ‘Bearing Capacity: 0’, and they explained to Laila that she would be singing a deliberate parody of The KLF’s nonsense. She had no idea what it was about. ‘We’re walking on water underground, we’re setting fire to the four words. Lead. Check. Bearing capacity zero’ and so on.
Her voice held, the producer was happy, and Laila caught the bus back to Norrtalje without really understanding what she had done. But it had been fun. A new environment where everybody had been nice to her; that was a novelty for a start.
In April the girl’s first tooth came through. Otherwise it was as if her development had come to a standstill. She made no attempt to crawl or shuffle along. She wasn’t interested in hiding games, or peep-bo. She didn’t imitate actions or movements; the only thing she reciprocated was sound: notes and melodies.
Sometimes Lennart took her out into the garden at night. On the odd occasion Laila was allowed to do it she would take the opportunity to whisper and talk to the girl as much as she could. She got nothing back-not a sound.
At the end of May, ‘Bearing Capacity: 0’ by DDT featuring Laila was released, and nothing happened. At first. Then something did happen, and then something else happened. In June it entered the
The attention made Lennart nervous, but there was no need for him to worry. In a few weeks it was over. However, it did lead to a call from an agency wanting to book Lennart and Laila for a few gigs. Lennart decided they would try one as an experiment, in Norrtalje in August. It was a motor show for vintage car enthusiasts, a mixture of a family day out and a meeting for boy racers.
‘So what are we going to do with the girl?’ asked Laila.
‘Well, it’s only in Norrtalje. She’ll be OK on her own for a couple of hours. It won’t be a problem.’
It was a hot afternoon in the middle of July. They were sitting at the table outside drinking coffee. Perhaps it was the unexpected success or the fact that she had been able to get out and about a bit that gave Laila courage. A very simple question had been grinding away in her head for several months. Now she put it into words.
‘Lennart. What’s going to happen with the girl?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you must have thought about it. What’s going to happen in the future. She’s growing. She’ll be walking soon. What are we going to do with her?’
It was as if a veil came down over Lennart’s eyes and he moved a long way away, even though he was still sitting at the table fingering his coffee cup.
‘She’s not going to be part of all that,’ he said. ‘She’s not going to be destroyed.’
‘No. But…from a purely practical point of view? How’s it going to work?’
Lennart folded his arms and looked at Laila as if from a great distance.
‘I’m not going to say this again. So listen carefully. We are going to keep her here. We are not going to let her out. We are going to train her so that she adapts to that way of life. She won’t be unhappy, because she won’t have seen anything else.’
‘But why, Lennart? Why?’
With exaggerated care, Lennart raised the cup to his lips, took a sip of the lukewarm coffee and placed the cup back on the saucer without making a sound.
‘I do not want to hear these questions again. I will answer you now. But never again. Is that clear?’
Laila nodded. Even Lennart’s voice had changed, as if a different version of him was speaking through his mouth. A person made from a heavier material, from his solid core. There was something compelling about the voice, and Laila sat there motionless, her eyes fixed on Lennart’s lips as he said:
‘Because she is not an ordinary child. She will never be an ordinary child. Or an ordinary person. She is white. Completely white. The only thing the world will do to her is to destroy her. I know this. I have seen inside her. People might regard it as a bad thing, keeping a child shut in. But it’s the best thing for her. I’m sure of that. She is pure music. The world is a dissonance. She would go under. Instantly.’
‘So it’s for
Lennart returned to the table. As if everything was pared away at once, his expression was suddenly fragile and hesitant. A lonely child in the forest. Laila couldn’t remember when she had last seen that look, and it stabbed her in the heart.
Lennart said, ‘And for mine. If she disappeared…I’d kill myself. She is the last. The last chance. There is nothing after her.’
They sat motionless. The needle in Laila’s heart twisted around and around. A sparrow landed on the table, pecking at a few cake crumbs. Afterwards Laila would realise that they had been standing at a crossroads, and that a decision had been made. In silence, like all important decisions.
