quiet? He couldn’t hear any music from the girl’s room, nor any humming. He put down the tools and went to investigate.
The girl had climbed out of her cot. While he was sawing, unable to hear anything, she must have fetched a hammer behind his back, then gone back and started on the CD player. Through a combination of hitting and wrenching she had managed to open up the front of both speakers and rip out the cones. She was now sitting on the floor scratching at them with her fingers, tugging at the wires as she shook her head.
He went over and tried to take the broken pieces off her, but she refused to let them go. She shook them and bit them.
‘Give those to me,’ he said. ‘You might cut yourself.’
The girl stared at him, her eyes narrowed. Then she said, with absolute clarity, ‘Music.’
Lennart was so stunned he gave up the tug-of-war and simply stared at her. It was the first word he had heard her say. He lowered his head to her level and asked, ‘What did you say?’
‘Music,’ the girl repeated, making a noise somewhere between a growl and a whimper as she banged the speaker cone on the floor.
Lennart got down on his knees beside her and said, ‘The music isn’t there.’
The girl stopped banging and looked at him.
‘Music is everywhere,’ he said. ‘Inside you. Inside me. When we sing, when we play.’ He pointed at the ruined CD player. ‘That’s only a machine.’
He had forgotten his resolution not to talk to the girl. It didn’t matter. Both Laila and Jerry had talked to her, so that project had had it. He pointed at the CD player again. ‘Do you understand? A machine. It’s people who make music.’
He took out the CD, a cheap Naxos edition of Schubert’s Second String Quartet. He pushed his forefinger through the hole and held it up in front of the girl. ‘The music is pressed onto this.’
The girl didn’t react to his words, but she was staring at the CD with big eyes. She tilted her head to one side, wrinkling her nose. Lennart turned the disc around to see what she was looking at. And saw himself.
As far as he was aware, the girl had never seen a mirror before. He turned the shiny surface towards her once again and said, ‘That’s you, Little One. That’s you.’
The girl stared at the disc on his finger as if she were under a spell, and whispered, ‘Little One…’ as a trail of saliva dribbled from the corner of her mouth. She crawled closer without breaking eye contact with her reflection. She reached out her hands for the disc and Lennart let her take it. Only then did he notice that she had dropped the piece of rope with the knots in it; it was lying on the floor behind her, chewed and stroked to death. She only had eyes for the CD.
When Lennart lifted her up and put her back in the cot, she clung firmly to the disc with both hands as she gazed down into the silvery pool of light, completely unreachable. But still Lennart rested his head on the frame of the cot and said, ‘But the music isn’t there, Little One. It’s here.’ He placed his forefinger on her heart. ‘And here.’ On her temple.
Jerry didn’t get around to visiting his parents until the spring. He was actually busy with a little business enterprise.
He had been working in the billiard hall in Norrtalje for a couple of years, cash in hand, stepping in as and when required. One evening when he was in the cafe washing coffee cups, an old acquaintance came in. Ingemar. They chatted for a while and when Jerry offered him a contraband Russian beer from the secret stash, Ingemar raised his eyebrows. ‘Have you got fags as well?’
Jerry said he hadn’t, and that the Russian beer was really only for regular customers, but he hardly thought Ingemar had turned into the kind of bloke who’d go running to the cops, had he?
‘No, no,’ said Ingemar, opening the beer with his lighter. ‘Quite the reverse. What if I said eighty kronor a carton? Interested?’
‘Are we talking about that Polish crap made from straw and newspaper?’
‘No, no, Marlboro. I don’t honestly know if it’s some kind of pirate factory or what, but they taste the same. Here. Try one.’
Ingemar held out a packet and Jerry examined it. It didn’t have a registration mark or stamp, but apart from that it looked like an ordinary packet of cigarettes. He shook one out and lit it. No difference whatsoever.
Ingemar was a truck driver these days, working mostly in the Baltic states. He had a contact in Estonia who sold cheap cigarettes if you didn’t ask too many questions. He looked around the room; two of the billiard tables were busy and three people were sitting at a table smoking. ‘Shouldn’t be a problem to shift say fifty cartons a month here. Add on a bit for yourself and you’re laughing.’
Jerry thought it over. A hundred and twenty kronor was a good price for a carton of fags. That would mean a profit of two thousand a month.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Let’s do it. When can you deliver?’ Ingemar grinned. ‘Right now. I’ve got the car outside.’ Ingemar didn’t have his truck parked outside the billiard hall, just an ordinary car. He looked around and unlocked the boot. Two black plastic sacks took up half the space. He showed Jerry the cartons, bundled in packs of five.
‘Four thou,’ he said. ‘As agreed.’
‘But I haven’t got that kind of money on me, you know that.’ ‘Next time. This will give you a bit of start-up capital.’ They carried the sacks down to the room where the rubbish was stored, and shook hands as they agreed to meet in a month’s time.
That same evening Jerry managed to shift eight cartons, which made it easier to fasten the remainder to the back of his motorbike under cover of darkness and drive home. In future he would ask Ingemar to deliver direct to his door.
He stacked the forty-two cartons in four neat piles in the corner of the living room, then sat down in the armchair and contemplated them, hands folded over his stomach.
He sat there rustling the remaining three hundred and twenty. He usually worked a six-hour shift at the hall, earning fifty kronor an hour. If it went on like this, his hourly rate had suddenly more than doubled.
The fifty cartons disappeared, and the following month Ingemar got his money and delivered the next batch to Jerry’s apartment. It was tempting to expand the operation, but Jerry realised he ought to be careful, selling only to people he trusted. Mustn’t get greedy. That was when things went down the pan.
His role as deputy supplier commanded a modicum of respect from those around him. He could hang out in the billiard hall even when he wasn’t working, and people were more inclined to talk to him than they had been. He bumped into people in town, that kind of thing. The satisfaction he’d been getting from the time he spent with Theres no longer felt so vital.
However, at the beginning of March he packed up his guitar, strapped it to his motorbike and started the bike first kick. He had seriously begun to consider buying a new one, with an electric starter. It was a possibility these days.
The house was still there, looking exactly as it had when he went round four months earlier. But something had changed. It took a while before Jerry was able to put his finger on it, but as he sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee with Lennart and Laila, picking up a biscuit from the plate, he saw it with sudden clarity.
It had just sort of happened, quite naturally. As if it was normal. No suspicion about his visit, no implied criticism and none of the simmering discontent between his parents that could erupt into a caustic remark at any moment. It was just coffee, home-made biscuits and a nice cosy chat. Jerry looked from Lennart to Laila; they
