You’re panting.
Talking about drink, muttering words and your smells mingle with the forest’s; it’s full of life but also of decay, of things that disappear.
Let go, let go.
I say the words now. But you pull me on, you tug and you drag and you are strong, you are just as raw as I expected.
Are you a lion? A leopard? A crocodile? A bear?
I want to get away.
I am Rakel.
Over-confident.
Panting.
Then you stop, black bands around us, and you turn round and I try to pull away but you catch my arm, pick me up, and there is no humanity in what you are. Gone is the light, gone is the dream.
Quiet, whore. Quiet.
And I am down on the ground now, no, no, no, not now, not like this and you hit me on the mouth and I scream but all I can feel is the taste of iron and something hard and powerful and long forcing its way upwards.
There, lie still now, here comes Kalle.
The ground cuts into me, burning.
Was this what I wanted so badly? Longed for?
I am still Rakel, and I strut for no man.
Kalle.
I can be like you, only sly.
You are breaking me, but I no longer protest, I lie nicely and it’s odd how I can shrink this moment to nothing.
I break, I was broken and your weight means I can’t breathe, but even so, you don’t exist.
Then you’re done.
You get up. I see you fasten your trousers, hear you mutter, Whore, whore, they’re all whores.
Branches snap, you stumble, mumble, then the silence tells me you are gone.
But the night has just begun.
The darkness condenses around my midriff, two hands stretch up into the air, break through the clear, shimmering film and decide that here, here there will be life.
I feel it even then.
That in me is growing all the pain and torment of what it means to be human.
I crawl on the wet ground.
The branches writhe, the tree trunks mock, the twigs, leaves, moss eat me.
I huddle down. But then I get up.
Stand up.
And my back is straight.
56
‘Let’s shake hands.’
Markus holds out his hand and Malin takes it. His grip is firm and decisive, has direction but is still not painfully hard.
Well-drilled, Malin thinks, and sees a man in a doctor’s white coat standing and practising handshakes with what is to be the perfect son.
‘Welcome.’
‘Thanks for inviting me.’
‘I don’t suppose we have as much space as your family,’ Malin says, throwing out her arm in the little hallway and wondering why she feels the need almost instinctively to make excuses in the company of Tove’s boyfriend.
‘This is lovely,’ he says. ‘I’d love to live so close to the centre.’
‘You’ll have to excuse . . .’
Malin wants to bite her lip, and then falls silent, but realises that she has to finish the sentence.
