Authors: Karin Alvtegen
Luleå to Hudiksvall 612, Lund to Karlskrona 190. Fuck! Where was she?
He looked towards the bar. How many steps could it be? He had to have a beer or something to force these feelings back. There were no seats available and hardly any room either, but a little farther down stood a man in his late fifties who had drunk too much but was still trying to convince the barman to serve him another. He stood up in a rage when he was refused. The metal chair crashed to the floor and the noise effectively silenced all conversation. The music took over.
Everyone was staring.
The barman took the man’s empty beer glass.
‘You’re done drinking for tonight. There won’t be any more here.’
‘You fucking little shit, give me another beer!’
‘I’ll have to ask you to leave now.’
The barman went over and put the glass in a rack for dirty dishes.
‘For fuck’s sake, what a shithole this is!’
The man looked around, searching for support in any of the eyes staring at him. Suddenly everyone was looking elsewhere, ignoring him. He didn’t exist. Only Jonas kept looking, felt hatred towards the man standing there, looking so pathetic and letting himself be degraded. In a flash he saw another man at another bar.
People all started talking again as if on command. The noise level increased and the blur of words was back. The man hesitated a few seconds, holding on to the bar in an attempt to look halfway sober. And, finally, with as much dignity as he could muster, he reeled towards the door and vanished into the night.
The chair still lay on the floor, and Jonas went over and righted it. The recollection the man had triggered had for some strange reason made the compulsion abate. He was not like his father.
He sat down on the chair. The barman wiped the counter in front of him and gave him a quick look.
‘Fucking riffraff.’
It was the same barman as the night before. The one who had served him and Linda. A tiny opportunity opened up.
‘A beer. Not a light one.’
‘A lager?’
‘Whatever.’
‘I’ll get you a Harp.’
‘OK.’
The barman reached for a glass from the rack above his head, filled it halfway and put it in front of him.
‘Forty-two.’
Jonas took out his wallet and put a fifty-krona note on the bar. The barman went off to serve some other customers and Jonas took a few quick gulps before he emptied the rest of the bottle into his glass. The foam ran over the edge and made a little pool on the bar. He dipped his index finger in the liquid and wrote an L on the newly wiped surface.
He had to ask. It was his only chance. He would drink a little more, get a little buzz on so the
compulsion wouldn’t come at him if everything went to hell.
He was paying attention half an hour later. The barman was standing right in front of him, hanging up some clean glasses. Jonas was on to his third beer and was once again full of resolve.
‘Say, I wonder if you could help me with something?’
‘Sure.’
Glass after glass was moved from the tray to the overhead rack.
‘It’s like this: I met a girl here yesterday. I don’t know if you remember that I was here last night.’
‘Yeah, I remember. You were sitting over there.’
He nodded towards the short end of the bar.
Jonas nodded.
‘Well, that girl . . .’
He broke off and looked down at the bar, then glanced up and smiled.
‘Well, you know. We went home together and all that. And then I got her phone number and promised to call her, but I lost the piece of paper. This is embarrassing as hell.’
The barman smiled.
‘Well, that’s not so cool.’
‘Do you remember her too?’
It was a really dumb question. Obviously he’d remember. No one who ever saw her would forget.
‘You mean the one you bought a cider for?’
Jonas nodded.
‘Linda is her name. Does she come here often?’
‘Not as far as I know, at least I’ve never seen her before.’
Jonas felt his hope sink. This man and this place were his only link.
‘So you don’t know what her last name is?’
The barman shook his head.
‘No idea. Sorry.’
Jonas swallowed.
The barman looked at him briefly and hung up his last glass, took the tray and left. Jonas pulled out his phone; the display was still blank. She knew his name and where he lived but she still hadn’t called. He looked around – at all the unfamiliar mouths talking and laughing, all the eyes gazing at each other, all the hands. Where was she now? Was she sitting in some other bar, a place like this but somewhere else? The thought that she was with other people right now, that someone else’s eyes at this moment were allowed to look on her, that her body might be on someone else’s retina, inside someone else.
‘Listen, maybe I can help you after all.’
He turned back to the bar. The barman stood in front of him with a receipt in his hand.
‘She paid for her first glass with a credit card. Before you got here.’
His heart turned a somersault inside his chest. He reached out his hand and took the receipt.
‘Take it easy. I need that back.’
He read the white slip of paper.
Handelsbanken.
She had added a tip of ten kronor and then she had signed it.
The barman was watching him.
‘But didn’t you say her name was Linda?’
He read the signature again. Refused to understand.
‘This must be the wrong receipt.’
‘No, I remember, it’s hers. The pen ran out of ink halfway through, see.’
He nodded at the receipt. The last letters were written in different ink.
‘This is definitely the woman you bought the cider for. But it might not be such a good idea to get in touch with her.’
The barman gave him a wry smile.
Jonas couldn’t take his eyes off the utterly incomprehensible signature. The woman who had made him betray Anna, who helped her to carry out her unjust revenge, had lied to him. The name he had learned to love over the past twenty-four hours was a lie, a lie that pierced him to the core.
Her name was Eva.
Eva Wirenström-Berg.
P
ork tenderloin au gratin and roasted garlic butter potatoes. And a nice Rioja from ’89. A hundred and seventy-two kronor she had paid for it.
She might just as well have served the liquid from the toilet brush holder. The fact was, she had once thought about doing just that.
They didn’t say a word to each other during the meal; all necessary communication was relayed through Axel. He was allowed to light the candles on the table and now he sat there in his special chair and thought they were having a cosy evening. He had no idea that the cosy evenings were over for good in this house, and that the man who had taken them away from him was sitting at his right side and gulping down his food, all so he could go back to his den as quickly as possible.
Henrik gave her a quick look, stood up and took his plate.
‘Are you done?’
She nodded.
With his other hand he lifted up the oven-proof dish with the pork tenderloin and went over to the counter.
She just sat there, amazed that he hadn’t burned himself; surely the dish was still hot.
With mute efficiency he began clearing the table, rinsing the dishes and putting them in the dishwasher.
The family dinner was over.
It had lasted seven minutes.
‘Axel, your programme’s starting. Come on, I’ll turn on the TV.’
Axel slid down from his chair and they went into the living room.
She sat there with her wine glass; he had forgotten to take it from her when he cleared the table. The wine bottle was more than half full, he had hardly touched it.
The first time the phone rang it was a quarter to twelve. Axel had fallen asleep in front of the TV at about eight, and Eva carried him in to the double bed. The rest of the evening she had spent alone on the sofa, sitting there staring at the flickering pictures on the screen. When the phone rang, Henrik happened to be out of his fortress and in the bathroom. She reached the phone first.
‘Eva,’ she said.
Not a sound.
‘Hello?’
Someone hung up.
She stood there with the receiver to her ear and felt the rage building. That fucking slut! She couldn’t even leave them in peace on a Friday night when he was home with his family.
She heard him flush the toilet and the bathroom door opened. He stood in the doorway.
‘Who was that?’
She put down the receiver and did her best to seem calm, leafing through a catalogue that lay on the kitchen counter.
‘I don’t know, they hung up.’
A shadow of uneasiness flitted across his face.
And then he vanished into his office again. The door was scarcely shut before the phone rang again, cutting through the silence.
She reached it first this time too.
‘Yes?’
Again a click. And then another ring as soon as she put down the phone. This time she didn’t say a word, she just stood there listening to someone breathing.
And then suddenly there was a voice.
‘Hello?’
‘Yes, this is Eva.’
‘Hi, this is Annika Ekberg.’
Jakob’s mother.
‘Jakob’s mother from day-care. Sorry for calling so late, you weren’t in bed already, I hope.’
‘No, no problem.’
‘I just have to ask you something. This may sound crazy, but Åsa, Simon’s mother, just called me and said that Lasse had received a strange email from Linda Persson at the day-care centre.’
‘A strange email?’
‘Yes, you could call it that. A love letter.’
‘What?’
‘That’s right.’
‘To Simon’s father?’
‘Yes, and that’s not all. We checked our email and we got one too.’
‘A love letter?’
‘Exactly the same one they got, word for word. I assume it’s for Kjelle and not me, but it wasn’t clear. Kjelle is mad as hell. In the email it sounds like they have some kind of love affair going on.’
‘Well, that doesn’t make any sense.’
‘No. I don’t know what to do.’
‘Don’t you think it’s some kind of mistake?’
‘I don’t know. It was sent from her email address at work. It’s possible that she meant to send it to somebody else, but it seems rather stupid. And if it was some kind of joke, then it’s not very funny.’
‘No, it certainly isn’t.’
‘I just wanted to hear if Henrik got one too.’
She suddenly felt unusually alert.
‘Wait just a second, I’ll check. No, actually I’ll have to hang up so we can go online. I’ll ring you in a few minutes.’
‘OK.’
She hung up. She wanted to do this in peace without having Jakob’s mother on the line. A slight smile was spreading inside her in the dark when she went up to the door and opened it without knocking. The stone was rolling. Where she wanted it to stop she didn’t know; for some reason she didn’t even care. Everything was ruined anyway. The goal was to do harm in return. Punish him.
He was sitting at his desk with his hands in his lap and staring straight ahead. The computer had gone into standby, and some coloured circles were snaking across the screen. He turned his head a little when he heard her come in.
But he didn’t look at her.
‘Who was that?’
‘Annika Ekberg. Jakob’s mother from day-care. Have you checked your email recently?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, this is completely incredible. Both Jakob’s and Simon’s fathers got love letters from Linda at daycare.’
Even his spine revealed his reaction. For a few seconds too long he sat perfectly still before he turned his head and looked at her. Just a quick glance; his eyes flicked timidly at hers and then back to the screen.
‘Oh, really. What did it say?’
He had never been a very good liar. Couldn’t he hear how he sounded? How his forced indifference was an insult to her intelligence.
‘I don’t know. They wanted you to check whether you got anything.’
She went over and stood by his side, well aware that this way he’d be forced to display the correspondents on his latest emails.
He recovered quickly.
‘I just checked. There wasn’t anything.’
‘Check again.’
‘Why?’
‘See if you have something now.’
‘I was just in to check it five minutes ago.’
He was irritated now. Irritated and scared.
This was quite enjoyable.
‘Five minutes ago I was talking on the phone. You couldn’t have checked it then, could you?’
He gave a deep sigh. Showed with all his body language how annoying he found her.
‘OK, maybe it was eight minutes ago. I didn’t look at the clock.’
‘Why don’t you want to check it?’
‘Damn it, I told you I just checked!’
An unpleasant tone of voice. So scared and so easy to upset. Imagine how much better you’d feel if you made an effort and looked at the truth, you fucking coward.
‘Give me the phone.’
‘Who are you going to call?’
‘Annika.’
He gave her the cordless phone and she glanced at the telephone list on the notice-board. Annika answered after the first ring.
‘Hi, it’s Eva.’
‘How’d it go?’
‘No, he didn’t get anything, he says.’
There was silence on the line.
Henrik sat as if paralysed, staring at the writhing snake on the screen.
She was busy thinking of her next move. Then she smiled to herself, looked at the back of his head and began talking. Let each syllable stab into him like a knife.
‘I still think we ought to give Linda a chance to explain herself. I have a hard time believing she meant to send those emails, but the rumour will probably spread like wildfire. I think we should phone everyone and arrange a meeting at the day-care on Sunday evening. I can take care of it if you want.’
She heard Jakob’s mother sigh on the other end.
‘I wouldn’t want to be in her shoes at that meeting.’
If only you knew what she does with them off.
‘No, me neither. Really. But what else can we do? This way at least she’ll have a chance to explain.’
Henrik still sat as if paralysed when she hung up.