He stood leaning against the counter with a glass in his hand. Funny how water and alcohol could look so much alike.
On the kitchen table in front of her lay a man’s white shirt.
She turned her head and looked at him when he came in, and the expression on her face filled him with terror. He wanted to run to her and hold her, comfort her, protect her. Lay his head on her lap like he had done when he was little and she would stroke his hair and say that everything was going to be all right. So many times they had sought comfort in each other, united against his father’s unpredictable weekend rages.
He looked at his father. He had those eyes he got when he had been drinking. When you knew he was someone nobody knew.
He took a swig from his glass.
‘Mamma has found a shirt with a little lipstick on it. That’s why she’s so mad.’
She had found out. In the midst of all the commotion over her reaction the words filled him with relief. Finally his father had been forced to confess. Now he would be free of his responsibility to protect her, be spared all the circumlocutions and lies that had come between them. Finally he would be hers again, totally, could stand on her side. As he had always done.
His father slammed down his glass on the counter and turned to his mother sitting at the kitchen table with her back to him.
‘What should I do, do you think? Eh? You never contribute anything! Just roam around here at home looking like a goddamn dishrag and complaining that there’s never enough money, that we never go on holiday or can afford anything. You’ll just have to go out and get a job yourself then, if it’s not enough!’
Jonas looked at his mother again and now he dared go over to her. He put his hand on her shoulder and she took it in hers.
Then he looked at his father. You bastard! We don’t need you any more. We never did.
He could see the change in his father’s eyes, which now belonged to a stranger. In the next instant his glass smashed against the tile above the cooker on the far wall.
‘And you, you sanctimonious little bastard. Standing there comforting her like you never knew a thing.’
A few seconds passed, then his mother let go of his hand.
‘If you only knew what he’s been doing so that you wouldn’t find out. He lies better than a con man, I don’t know where he comes up with it all. But he gets it from you, I can see, your family has always been a pack of liars.’
His father continued without mercy.
‘Why don’t you tell her now? Tell her what a stud I am. How all the women except for her will do anything so I’ll screw them. The one with the lipstick you’ve even met. So you saw it all for yourself.’
Two weeks later. He had been allowed to go along to the docks at Soderhamn. Was offered a chance to make a little extra money by helping out with a cleanup after a construction job where his father laid pipes. He was glad when they left, glad that they were going to spend two days together. Maybe he’d have a chance to talk to his father about how he felt, how he couldn’t lie any more. He waited all day for an opportunity that never came. Then he thought: tonight when we eat dinner at the hotel, then I’ll get my chance. She was already sitting in the dining room when they arrived, and before they even got their food his father had invited her over to their table. He ordered more and more beers. Jonas sat silently in shame at his father’s increasingly ridiculous behaviour. About an hour later he gave Jonas a few hundred-krona notes and sent him out on the town. He didn’t dare come back until around three in the morning. He needed to sleep. He was dead tired from the day’s work, and the next morning they had to get up at six thirty and go back. She was still there in the hotel room. Their clothes lay scattered on the floor, her fat right leg was sticking out from the covers, and neither of them noticed him come in. He spent the rest of the night on a sofa in the lobby, but something inside him had finally had enough. In the morning he couldn’t control all his pent-up rage any longer. For the first time he dared to refuse, and his father sat hungover in his underwear on the edge of the messy double bed and tried to beg for forgiveness. But Jonas was unyielding. This time he was going to tell him. He didn’t intend to lie any more. When his father recognised the firmness in his threat he collapsed with his face in his hands, and with his gut hanging over the edge of his shorts he sobbed and begged him not to do it.
And Jonas had once more been forced into betrayal.
His mother turned her head and looked at him. She didn’t say a word, but the question was crystal clear in her eyes. He lowered his eyes, couldn’t look at her. He squatted down beside her, lowered his head, his face close to her right leg. He prayed to God that she would touch him. Show him with a single sign that she forgave him. That she understood that he never wished her any harm. That he did it all for her sake.
‘Forgive me.’
A few seconds passed, maybe it was more.
Then she pushed the chair back and stood up. Without looking at either of them she left the kitchen.
And somewhere deep inside he already knew that she would never ever come back.
He parked the car right outside the main entrance of Karolinska in a no parking zone. If anyone gave him a parking ticket this time they would have themselves to blame.
The lift up to Anna’s ward had never moved so slowly. On every floor there was someone who had to get on or off, and the stress he felt gave him a taste of lead in his mouth.
The corridor was empty. He hurried to Anna’s door and had just put his hand on the door handle.
‘Jonas, wait!’
He turned towards the voice. A nurse he had only seen a few times before came rushing towards him.
‘Doctor Sahlstedt is coming. I think you should wait.’
He’d rather rot in hell. Nobody in the world could prevent him from going in to see her, he was going in this very instant.
He pulled open the door.
The bed was not visible from the doorway, but what he saw was enough.
A sudden inertia prevented him from entering the room. A passive moment, nothing that needed to be thought, done or felt.
A pause before everything would become clear.
He had an intense urge to close the door again, wishing he hadn’t seen that the room was illuminated by a candle fluttering in the gust of air from the door he had just opened, sending its light flickering across the wall.
A hand on his shoulder cut off all possibility of escape and brought him back to what the future held. He turned his head and looked into Dr Sahlstedt’s sad face. The unwelcome touch of the doctor’s hand forced him forward and the next instant he saw her.
The room clean and tidy. Only the bed with Anna, the white sheets tucked in. The probes and tubes gone and all the machines rolled out to patients who still needed them.
Dr Sahlstedt went over to her.
‘She had an embolism around four o’clock.’
Around four o’clock.
When he had been lying with his lips against Linda’s skin.
‘There was nothing we could do.’
He had lain there naked with all the desire he had saved up for Anna and himself given away to another woman.
He went over and sank down on the edge of the bed but couldn’t bring himself to touch her. His hands were incontrovertible proof.
‘Shall I leave you alone for a moment?’
He didn’t answer, but he heard Dr Sahlstedt’s steps cross the floor and the door shut.
Her hands crossed on her breast. The claw-like left hand trying to clutch the other. On her throat a white compress over the hole left by the respirator tube.
For a single evening he had left her alone, and then she seized her chance. She must have understood. Somehow she must have known that he was with another woman, and this was her punishment. For two years and five months she had lain here biding her time, waiting for the right moment when her revenge would hit him hardest. She had left him, once and for all, and she had chosen the moment with care.
