Breathless (21 page)

—

The afternoon Yoel arrived on the train in the blazing heat was a day when everything smelled strong and burned and acrid and carnal, as if all the hay were flesh. An oppressive smell in the house was the first thing he pointed out to us. I thought it was the illness, but he said it was an animal smell. We had lived in the odor for so long we didn't notice it, but Yoel said that it stank. He was sure it was coming from the attic.

“The rats,” Lukas said bleakly. When his papa stopped forcing him to empty the cages, he had forgotten them, suppressed the thought of them . . . the cages his father loved when he was well.

“I'll take care of them,” I said quickly, because Lukas looked as though he would pass out at the mere thought of what it looked like up there. However disgusting I thought it was, I didn't harbor the same feelings for the animals as he did. I put on rubber boots, tied a kitchen towel over my nose and mouth, and fetched the hook for the hatch to the attic, before Yoel blocked my path:

“Are you mad, girl—we'll phone for Anticimex!” Stared at me as if he really were asking himself what loony bin he had ended up in. A few minutes later he'd had a telephone conversation, explained the situation, and persuaded them that they had to make an urgent call.

You know what people say—that girls who sleep with everyone don't want to sleep with the only one who loves them.
It was only a line from a film, Lukas . . . from
Breathless
. I feel his eyes on me as we sit in Gábriel's bedroom. Yoel next to me. It's a strange way of getting to know your first lover, as observer at Lukas's papa's deathbed. On the last day Yoel is sitting quietly by the wall, prepared to be there but not to be seen. A stranger in their home, in the bedroom among the most intimate secrets of their life. Sitting in the darkest corner interpreting at a distance to show respect, or perhaps keeping a distance for his own sake. Because the situation upsets him.

He's not a trained interpreter, but his mother works at the embassy in Budapest and has found a few assignments for him. And the job is like this sometimes, he says: headlong into the life of strangers, vitally important events, sensitive conflicts, delicate situations. How do you make that all right? He explains that when he leaves he forgets everything that has been said. At the time he is concentrating so hard on the words that the content and context almost escape him.

Yoel sits with us until the end, ready to catch any last crucial words, but there are none.

Too late. Too late for me and Lukas too—something has happened this summer and it is not Yoel's fault. It would have happened anyway.

Lukas and Yoel. An incompatible chemistry. They even smell as though they have a totally different composition. Lukas slightly metallic, like water in storms at high altitude. He looks as though he was suffering from altitude sickness some days, something going out of control. Yoel smells of expensive perfume, even if he is broke. He doesn't want to smell broke, he reveals. But he's not poor in the way Lukas is, for a wealthy family always provides protection against the wolves. That way he can buy expensive eau de cologne with his last few cents.

I know that I have fallen for him. And I almost hate him for it.

S
hould the eyes be open or closed? They are half open now. How do you close them without touching him? You shouldn't touch a dead person, should you? As a child I wasn't supposed to touch the dead birds in the garden, but I did. Always carried them in and laid them on a bed of cotton wool in clean butter dishes. Should we put a coin under his tongue? And his hands. What should we do with his hands? They are lying so haphazardly, one clenched, the other open, bent at a strange angle, as if he were trying to hold on to this life with one hand, though there is nothing to hold on to. Oedipus stabs out his own eyes with pins from a brooch, only I don't remember why. A desperate gesture from a grieving man because he can't weep? I've seen Lukas cry before, but not the way he is now, without tears, much more frightening. I feel like a hired mourner. I didn't have any strong feelings for Gábriel, at least not positive ones. Lukas's feelings weren't positive either, but despite everything there was a bond between them, and the line between bond and love, where does it lie? I look at Gábriel's hands. He was skilled with them, but I can't see them without thinking of all the times they hurt Lukas. Had Gábriel really deserved this summer of patient watchfulness, deserved Lukas's . . . kindness?

“Kindness is something people seldom deserve. That's why it's called kindness,” Yoel says, when we've gone out to leave Lukas alone with his father for a while. We sit down under the roof of the porch in the rain and each drink a bowl of buttermilk, famished, haven't eaten all day. To think about your own hunger in the midst of it all felt so wrong. I let my stomach grumble while we sat by Gábriel's bed.

His last sentences had been incoherent. On one occasion he opened his eyes and looked at me. I felt like an angel of death, sitting there in my white T-shirt, pale after a summer indoors. I didn't know that dying was such a struggle, thought it happened by itself, without opposition. But when I looked at Gábriel it seemed anything other than simple. He was fighting and I couldn't decide whether it was to die or to live. At first I thought he was trying to cling on—you know it's the last thing you'll ever hold on to, this goddamn little life, the last wrung-out remnants of it—but perhaps he was trying to let go?

When he finally died I didn't even notice. It took some time before I realized that he was no longer breathing.

—

Failed miracle. The wisteria sways as if charged with electricity in the evening wind. It's been a still day, but now the wind is blowing up from all directions. The wind through Gábriel's hair gives me a start. Without my noticing, Yoel has opened the window and Gábriel's hair rustles like dry winter grass in the draft, as if he were coming back to life for a little while, but it's a false alarm. What did Lukas whisper in his ear before he died?

“Whispered? Don't remember,” he answers absently. “I don't actually remember. Did I whisper something?”

—

The last thing that Gábriel told us was that Lukas was the cause of his mother's death. I thought it was so unnecessary to say it here and now, so harsh. I wished that Yoel had chosen not to translate it. What would Lukas do with this knowledge, other than bear it for the rest of his life? Possibly it could explain Gábriel's antipathy to him as he was growing up, the constant coldness. But did it bring any comfort to know the cause? What Lukas had now learned could never be retracted—that the fire he happened to start had robbed him of his mama. And the papa he loved. If it was a relief for Gábriel to unburden himself in his last conscious hours, it was now Lukas who would carry the load instead.

When I looked at Gábriel's hands, before they became slack and the blood stopped flowing through them, I thought of all the experiences they had in them. All the blows they had dealt and all the caresses, albeit long ago. All the thousands of hours at the factory, hand grips, muscle memory, everything you had to learn, only to die.

When he closed his eyes for the last time he had less than twenty-four hours to live. Something loosened inside me and was cast out when I realized that it was the end. A fear, a doubt. Now it was over. We had done what we could. It was not much, but we had done it. Now we could begin to live once more. Sleep and eat and laugh and touch each other as usual.

But for Lukas it was different. He had become less and less approachable, and now something in his eyes had withdrawn completely. His face was so haggard, it looked as though the whole summer had been one long all-night party. I stayed with him that evening, but when he refused to phone the hospital and ask them to come and fetch Gábriel's body, I left. Couldn't cope with one more sleepless night. Something had come to an end inside me too. For Lukas perhaps the body was still Gábriel, but for me it was dead.

“I'm going now,” I said. He could have stopped me, but he didn't. He could have said, “I love you,” or “Do you love me?” or “Hold me for a while,” or “Come here and I'll hold you for a while.” Whatever he had said, I would have said yes.

“Go,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Well go then!”

“Yes.”

I went. Home to Mama. Showered and changed my clothes and answered her questions as well as I could. Then I went down to the pearl fisher's house and spent the night there with Yoel. It was the last night before he returned to Stockholm. He was already late, had stayed longer than he had planned:

“For your sake,” he said.

“You mean for Lukas's sake?”

“For all your sakes . . . You're the most remarkable constellation I've ever come across.” Constellation? Like stars that form something together even though they are so far apart.

That night I dreamed of electric machines and legs of lactic acid that desperately resisted. Morphine injections, stained sheets over a dead body. Empty lungs, empty words of comfort. Don't comfort me, help me to shout, Lukas asked me in my dream, but in reality he didn't reach out to me, and I didn't dare approach him either.

I thought the whole time that he would knock on the door. I'd told him that when he had called for the ambulance, he should come and fetch me. When he had arranged for them to come and collect the body, he should tell me. But he didn't come.

It was as easy as that. Just to leave. I wasn't going to live and die in this village after all? In Mama's house, in Papa's absence, in Grandfather's arboretum, in Lukas's shadow. When you start thinking about childhood you know it's already over. Perhaps it's the same with love.

“We'll see how it works out. Not that it's ever worked before. As soon as anyone's moved in with me, it's gone wrong,” Yoel warned, “but you're different.” What do you mean, different? I didn't want to be different, I wanted to be the same as all the others.

“Well, you don't seem to have such high demands of life, I mean, and you're so damn sexy when you look at me like that—but be careful—I'm the sort that strikes back.” So strange that it had gone wrong then . . . with the girls. I began to suspect that maybe it wasn't such a good idea after all. Reminded him that I didn't have a ticket for the train.

“Haven't you got a ticket? That means we'll have to steal a car.”

“. . . no . . .”

“Well, that depends on you. How much you want to come.”

As if it were a game, a film, a
Bonnie and Clyde
remake. He sat by one of the open windows looking handsome, had packed but not cleaned, obviously intended to leave the house in the chaos he had achieved in such a short time.

“Besides, didn't Lukas say that he had a car in for repair and he couldn't afford to get it back?” The apple of Lukas's eye, the blue Ford—he will never let that go, I thought. “I've always wanted a cool old jalopy like that.”

“Do you always . . .”

“What?”

“Well—do you always, sort of, get what you want?” I asked, provoked.

“Get? It's not a question of getting, Lo, it's a question of fixing.”

Okay. But you'll never get the Ford. It was Lukas's pride and joy, the only dream he had managed to realize. Lukas's. When he was forced to put it in the garage at the beginning of summer to have the front axle changed, it was as if he had lost an arm. The garage had immediately found five other faults that they had taken care of, without asking him first, and now he had an unpaid bill of several thousand, more than he had paid for the damn Ford. If he didn't come and fetch it soon, they threatened to sell it. He couldn't pay, I knew that. I wished that I could help him, had turned over in my mind ways that I might wheedle the money out of Mama. And now Lukas had to pay for the funeral too. Thousand-krona notes would just flutter away, even if the undertakers agreed to an installment plan. He had no idea dying was so expensive. He'd thought that Gábriel had money in an account somewhere, because they always lived so frugally, but there didn't appear to be a cent anywhere. He must have sent money back home out of his pay all these years. Lukas just didn't know to whom.

“Maybe he won't think of it as selling the car to me, but as me paying it off for him,” Yoel was calculating.

“Sure.”

“Do you think?”

“No. Never! He would never do that.”

“We'll see,” said Yoel, as if he already considered the car his own.

—

Lukas looked as though he had fallen asleep in the sun on the wooden porch. Lay outstretched on our blanket, but rose hastily as if he heard our footsteps reverberate through the ground. I felt uncomfortable as soon as I saw him—as in the past, when I saw that he had been beaten but wanted to pretend he hadn't. It always gave me a bad conscience, as if it were my fault, which most often it was in one way or another.

I shouldn't have gone with Yoel to ask about the car. I wasn't his accomplice and the invitation to Lukas to be released from the car problem was completely Yoel's idea. It was like extortion. I knew how hard pressed Lukas was and when I explained that to Yoel he'd seen his chance—even if he did quickly turn it into us helping him out of a tight spot . . . It could mean debt collection, action for nonpayment of debt, and God knows what, which would keep you in debt for ever.

I wondered whether Gábriel was still lying inside or whether an ambulance had driven through the village and I hadn't heard it. With sirens turned off, as always on that mission. I wondered if Lukas could see that I was holding my breath as we approached. That I had just been screwed and was ready to clear out. But how would he be able to see that? He didn't even look at me. Not one single time.

He just waited to hear what Yoel had to say and listened, expressionless. With every moment that Lukas did not look at me, I felt more and more transparent. Soon he wouldn't be able to see me even if he wanted to. I could still feel the sensation of Yoel's penis inside me; if I became invisible it would be the only thing to be seen, floating in the air like a raised finger at Lukas. I crossed my legs even though that would scarcely help. It was aching slightly and the rest of me was so numb that I couldn't help but focus on it. Lukas looked the worse for wear and worn out through lack of sleep, but at least he was standing up. Had he slept at all? He usually slept so lightly that he woke up if I wasn't holding him. Had he eaten? Spent the night out here? Was he cold? Had he drunk? Did he have a hangover? He was wearing my red socks. They looked out of place: the rest of his clothes were black for the occasion.

Yoel went through it all one more time, a deal where he paid the garage bill and a few thousand more into the bargain and took charge of the car. He didn't mention anything about “we,” otherwise the chance of Lukas agreeing would of course have been zero.

“You're joking?” After an eternity I heard Lukas's voice.

“It's actually a good deal,” Yoel persevered. “You'll get rid of a problem. And haven't you got enough problems just now?” Lukas gazed at him as though looking at a cheat and a traitor and trying to decide what category of swindler he was dealing with. “You should always ask for an estimate when you leave your car at a garage or call in a workman,” Yoel admonished, as if Lukas hadn't understood that. Now there will be a fight, I thought. Now Lukas will take out all his frustration on him, wallop him.

“Take it,” was all Lukas said. Yoel was caught off balance. An arsenal of arguments that he now wouldn't have use for. He hadn't reckoned on getting off so lightly.

“Take it.”

“Okay . . . I don't have that much cash on me at the moment, but I'll send it as soon as I get to Stockholm. Okay? And we'll have to sign all the registration papers over to me, to avoid any hassle.”

“Do what the hell you want,” Lukas said and walked into the house. He knew. We'd always been so close to each other that one look was all he needed to see that I had been with Yoel. It wasn't hatred in his eyes, it was a kind of inverted love.