And then, suddenly, a movement outside. Something quite close out there passed like a shadow beyond her reflection. The terror came like an electric shock: there was someone standing on the balcony staring in at her. Quickly she turned off the lamp, got up and backed away. The pressure over her chest. It was pitch dark out there, only diffuse shadows from the branches of the trees against the dark sky. She stood with her back to the wall and didn’t dare move. Someone had sneaked round the house, carefully climbed up onto the balcony, and stood there protected by the darkness, looking in at her, standing only a few metres from her and looking straight into her most secret thoughts.
A sudden longing for Henrik. For him to come home.
Cautiously she moved towards the kitchen with her eyes fixed on the black window. She backed away and hurried over to the phone on the kitchen counter and quickly pushed the speed-dial number for his mobile. Two rings, three, four. And then silence, as he turned it off.
Not even the voicemail went on.
She was alone.
Inside the house.
And out there on the balcony, in the pitch-black darkness, stood someone who knew it.
It was undeniably a lovely house she lived in, this woman who had lied to him. Probably a hundred years old with yellow wood panels and white gingerbread trim, surrounded by gnarled bare fruit trees waiting for spring. Two cars in the driveway, a Saab 9-5 combi and a white Golf. Both considerably newer models than his own old Mazda. Inside this well-to-do suburban idyll is where she lived, then, the woman who had misused his body and seduced his soul. She and the one who went under the designation ‘us’.
He had parked the car a couple of blocks away and approached on foot. He had been in agony all morning before he left the flat, but when he finally ventured out on a foray it had gone surprisingly easily. Perhaps it was the new feeling inside him that helped him, the feeling that an injustice had been committed and that he was the victim; a need to defend himself against an external enemy instead of the inner one.
He passed the house’s mailbox, a cobalt-blue metal contraption that required a key to be emptied, with a small opening that required two hands to stuff the mail inside. An object hated by all postmen and newspaper boys. And there they stood so beautifully, the names of the couple who shared the home he saw before him. Eva & Henrik Wirenstrom-Berg.
Eva and Henrik.
To the left of the house the lot extended into a wooded common, with only a low hedge in between. He looked around and, since there was not a soul in sight, he took his time as he stepped on to the common amongst the trees. He stood behind a tree trunk with his hands on the rough bark and looked in at the back side of the house. A balcony, a lawn, several fruit trees, flower beds, in the corner of the yard a yellow-painted shed. All well- tended and nicely laid out, someone’s cherished home. With his eyes still fixed on the house he leaned his cheek against the tree, feeling its roughness against his skin, and a shiver went through him. He wondered whether she was behind the windowpanes. And if
A whore is what she was.
He may have stood for half an hour behind the tree trunk when the balcony door opened. At first he couldn’t see who had opened it, but the next moment she stood before him. His reaction shocked him. He hated her, but suddenly having her right there before him aroused a desire unlike anything he had ever felt before. During all the years of longing, all the nights at the hospital with Anna’s mute body close to his, he had never desired anything as much as the woman he saw before him. But he hated her; she had seduced him, used him. These irreconcilable feelings fought for space inside him, forcing him to take a tighter grip on the tree in order to stay upright at all.
So close now, and yet so far away.
Over there on the balcony she sat down; in one hand she held a phone and in the other a white sheet of notebook paper. A light-blue cardigan hung over her shoulders.
At first she sat utterly still, looking out across the lawn. Then she straightened up, looked at the phone in her hand, and dialled a number. He couldn’t hear what she was saying; only a few words reached him behind the tree trunk.
The conversation took perhaps five minutes, and as soon as she hung up she looked at the paper and dialled another number.
The realisation that he could watch her without her knowledge made him excited. She was exposed to his eyes and utterly defenceless; he had power over her. Again and again she dialled a new number, and he wondered who she was calling and what she was saying. He wanted to know. She looked serious as she talked, didn’t smile once. Then she took off the light-blue cardigan and placed it beside her on the bench. He could see the contour of her breasts under her jumper, the breasts his hands had caressed only a couple of days ago. He wanted to have that cardigan that had just rested on her body, inhale the smell of it, put it on.
The phone in her hand rang. She pressed the button and he could hear her answer with her name. The name that she didn’t want him to know. He had to hear what she was saying. Cautiously and with infinite slowness so that his movements wouldn’t attract her attention, he moved forward through the trees. Then he reached the last tree trunk, the one bordering the yard. A couple of metres ahead of him was the yellow shed.
She looked down at the floor of the balcony.
He didn’t hesitate but seized the moment and ran the short distance to the protective wall and slipped quickly behind it. Through the gap between the panels and the drainpipe he could see her with one eye, but her voice was still undetectable. He was too far away.
She made a few more calls before suddenly getting up and vanishing back through the balcony door. The light-blue cardigan still lay on the bench.
He stood there for a while, unsure what to do. The sun had disappeared behind the treetops of the common, and he was suddenly aware that he was cold. As long as she was in front of him, no physical sensations were able to reach him, but she’d gone. He wondered whether it had something to do with her aura. Something about her body shielded him.
He ran the short distance back into the trees, then he walked without hurrying out to the street to the front of the house and stopped. It was the other one he had come to have a look at. The one who evidently was named Henrik and who was included in the designation ‘us’. So far he hadn’t seen any sign of him. At a slow pace he again walked past the mailbox with their names on it. He realised that he couldn’t stand there without attracting attention, so he started walking in the direction of the street where he had parked. He was feeling quite cold now, and when he got back to the car he turned up the heat all the way.
The thought of driving to his flat didn’t appeal to him. It was as though a magnet were drawing him towards the yellow house with the white gingerbread trim. He put the car in gear and let the force- field draw him to it. He drove slowly a short distance around the neighbourhood and then he was back. She was inside. Along with her, the other, the one who was worthy.
Just as he passed the mailbox the front door opened.
There he was.
His foot hit the brake without being told to do so by his brain. The man outside the front door locked it after him and looked curiously in his direction. Jonas turned his face away. He had wanted to see more, look more closely, but he didn’t want to be seen. Not now. Not yet.
A hundred metres farther along was a roundabout. When Jonas passed the house on the way back, his superior was sitting in the Golf and just backing out of the driveway. Jonas slowed down and let him back out. A hand in the side window waved to thank him; Jonas nodded slightly in acknowledgement.
You’re welcome. I’ve fucked your woman too.
He followed at a safe distance. From the irregular streets of the residential neighbourhood to the motorway leading towards the city. He kept a few cars in between them. No one must know that he was there, watching, checking, in control. Calm filled him. The compulsion was far away.
After Danvikstull they turned off to the left towards the newly built-up area in Norra Hammarbyhamn, first to the right and then right again. He knew this part of Sodermalm. He had filled in there for a week several years ago when half the city called in sick during a flu epidemic. The car in front of him turned right up Duvnasgatan and
