‘Being seen, the most important thing for human beings, didn’t you once say that? About television, actually? Being in a reality show that’s being filmed and shown on the internet twenty-four hours a day is like being seen by God, all the time.’
‘So who’s God?’ Annika said. ‘The camera lens?’
‘Nope,’ Schyman said. ‘The viewing public. When did any of us last have the chance to be God?’
‘You get to be God every day, at least on the paper,’ Annika said. ‘Just as omnipotent, unjust and full of poor judgements as the real God was with Cain and Abel.’
Now it was Schyman’s turn to be speechless. Annika could hear her accusations echo in the silence, and wished she’d bitten her tongue.
‘I’m just extremely bloody upset that my story about Benny Ekland’s murder was thrown off the front page,’ she said, in an effort to excuse her remarks.
He snorted, shook his head, and walked over to the window.
‘Benny Ekland wasn’t a name,’ Anders Schyman said, towards the glass of the window. ‘And besides, the link to terrorism was extremely vague.’
‘And how much of a name is Paula from Pop Factory?’
‘Paula came second in the competition last spring and released a single that got to number seven in the charts. She’s reported the incident to the police and is prepared to have her name and picture published, even in tears,’ Anders Schyman said, without sounding the slightest bit ashamed.
Annika took two steps towards his back.
‘And why does she do that? Because she’s fallen out of the charts. Surely we ought to think for a moment before we start doing the bidding of two-bit celebrities like her?’
‘Do you know, Annika,’ he said, ‘I can’t be bothered to argue with you about this. I don’t need to justify to you the priorities that are actually responsible for saving this paper from closure.’
‘So why are you doing it, then?’
‘What?’
She gathered her papers, tears bubbling under the surface.
‘I’m going to carry on,’ she said, ‘if you’ve no objection. But I know that you have to prioritize. If Ozzy Osbourne throws another T-bone steak into his neighbour’s garden, I realize that I’m fucked.’
She walked out before he could see her tears of rage.
19
They were sitting in front of the television, two glasses of wine in front of them. Annika was staring at the flickering picture without registering it. The children were asleep, the dishwasher was rattling away in the kitchen, the vacuum cleaner was waiting for her out in the hall. She felt completely paralysed, staring at a man walking to and fro in the foyer of a hotel, as the day, the week, hammered against the inside of her skull, heavy pressure weighing on her chest.
Her mind drifted to that boy, Linus, who had been so sweet with his spiky hair, so sensitive and hesitant… She closed her eyes and saw his eyes, intelligent, watchful. Schyman’s dry voice echoed through her head,
Thomas suddenly laughed out loud, making Annika jump.
‘What is it?’
‘He’s so fucking brilliant.’
‘Who?’
Her husband stared at her as though she was a bit slow.
‘John Cleese, of course,’ he said, waving his hand towards the television. ‘
He looked away from her, concentrating on the television again, leaning forward and taking a sip of wine, smacking his lips appreciatively.
‘By the way,’ he said, ‘did you drink up my Villa Puccini?’
She shut her eyes for a moment, then glanced at him.
‘What do you mean, your?’
He looked at her in surprise.
‘What’s up with you? I just asked if you’d drunk my wine, I was thinking of opening it tomorrow.’
She got up.
‘I’m going to bed.’
‘What is it now?’
He threw out his arms as he sat in the sofa, she turned her back on him and sailed out towards the hall.
‘Anki, for God’s sake. Come here. I love you. Come and sit with me.’
She stopped in the doorway. He got up, walked over to her, wrapped his arms round her shoulders. She felt his heavy arms on her and around her, one hand on each breast.
‘Annika,’ he whispered, ‘come on. You haven’t touched your wine.’
She couldn’t help letting out a tearful sob.
‘Do you want to know what I did at work today?’ he said enthusiastically, pulling her back to the sofa again, pressing her down and sitting beside her, holding her to him. She ended up with her nose in his armpit, it smelled of deodorant and washing powder.
‘What?’ she muttered into his ribs.
‘I gave a bloody good presentation of the project for the whole working group.’
She sat still, waiting, expecting him to go on.
‘What about you?’ he said eventually.
‘Nothing special,’ she whispered.
Saturday 14 November
20
The man was walking hesitantly, breathlessly, up Linnegatan towards the Fyris River. He was clutching his left hand against his stomach, and holding the right one up to protect his ear, grimacing slightly, not at the pain but rather at the wave of nostalgia the train journey had released. He was defenceless – the memories flooded over him, thundering through him, crashing like a tidal wave right into his mind, stirring up the sludge that had been lying on the bottom so long that he had forgotten it existed. Now it had all come back, the images and smells and sounds that had never done any harm as long as they were hidden among the other forgotten nonsense. But now they were singing, chanting and proclaiming so loudly that he couldn’t hear himself think.
He found himself staring up at a window on the second floor of the Fjellstedska student hostel, one with an Advent star and a little plant on the window sill. They were there again, the girls he had had behind that barred window three and a half decades ago, his first women; he could feel their beery breath and blushed at his own clumsy shyness.
He had been so amazed. The world had seemed so strange. What naive astonishment at its scope and opportunities. What bitter disappointment when its limitations slammed in his face like iron gates.
The howl of the sounds became lonely. He could feel the draught from the floor, the rat that had stared at him from the window sill that ice-cold morning, the same window sill. He saw it in another light, the frost on the inside of the glass, the rug he had taken with him to remind him of Mother, the nice one where she had woven in his
