Handling the Undead (28 page)

There was no one to ask, they were all dead and settled into legend, their humanness long gone.

But she had
seen.

Perhaps there were others who had seen, thousands through the ages. Perhaps what set the saints apart-the holy women and men-was that they held fast to what they had seen, not allowing their realisation to fade and

die, but they held on, held on and refused to let go, saw forgetfulness as a tool of the devil and held on. Maybe this was the secret.

Elvy took hold of the bedspread, squeezing it hard.

Yes, Lord. I will hold on.

She shut her eyes and tried to rest. By the time her body finally

started to relax, it was time to go.

Koholma 11.00

Elias had made progress. Great progress.

The first day he had not shown the slightest interest in the exercises from the book that Mahler tried to go through with him. Mahler had held out a shoe box and said, 'I wonder what there is in here?' and Elias had not moved, either before or after he opened the lid and showed him the little stuffed dog.

Mahler had put a brightly coloured top on Elias' night stand and set it in motion. The top spun itself out and then fell to the floor. Elias did not even follow it with his gaze. But Mahler kept going. The fact that Elias reached out for the bottle when it was brought to him indicated that he was capable of reacting, if he had a reason.

Anna did not object to the training program, but showed no enthusiasm either. She sat with Elias for hours; slept on a mattress on his floor. But she did nothing concrete, Mahler felt, to improve his condition.

It was the remote-controlled car that broke the ice. The second day Mahler put in fresh batteries and directed it into Elias' room, hoping the sight of the toy he had been so fond of would bring something in him to life. It did. As soon as the car banged into the room something happened to the way Elias held his body. Then he followed the car in its journey around the room. When Mahler brought it to a stop, Elias put his hand out for it.

Mahler did not give it to him, he let it drive around a couple more times. Then what Mahler had been hoping for happened. Slowly, slowly, as if he were wading through mud, Elias started to get up out of bed. When the car stopped, Elias halted for a moment, then continued to make his way up.

'Anna! Come take a look!'

Anna came up in time to see Elias drag his legs over the edge of the bed. She clapped her hand over her mouth, screamed and ran over to him.

'Don't stop him,' Mahler said. 'Help him.'

Anna held Elias under his arms and he got to his feet. With Anna's support he took a tentative step toward the car. Mahler drove it up a few centimetres, then back again. Elias took another step. When he was almost there and held out his hand, Mahler drove the car away, to the door.

'Let him take it,' Anna said.

'No,' Mahler said. 'Then he'll stop.'

Elias turned his head in the direction of the car, turned his body in the direction of his head and walked toward the door. Anna followed, tears streaming down her cheeks. When Elias reached the door, Mahler drove the car into the hall.

'Let him have it,' Anna's voice was muffled. 'He wants it.'

Mahler continued to steer the car away as soon as Elias caught up with it, until Anna stopped, with Elias straining in her arms.

'Stop,' she said. 'Stop. I can't keep doing this.'

Mahler let the car stop. Anna held Elias under his chest with both hands.

'You're making him into a robot,' she said. 'I don't want to be part of it.'

Mahler sighed and lowered the remote control.

'Would you rather he was just a lump? This is fantastic.'

'Yes,' Anna said. 'Yes it is. But it's ... wrong.' Anna sank down onto the floor, shifted Elias onto her lap and took the car, giving it to him. 'Here, sweetheart.'

Elias' fingers flew across the plastic details on the car, as if searching for a way in. Anna nodded, stroking his hair. His hair had grown stronger and had stopped falling out, but there were a couple of bald spots from the first few days.

'He's wondering how it can be moving,' Anna said, and drew teary mucus into her nose. 'He's wondering what it is that has made it move.'

Mahler put down the remote control.

'How do you know that?'

'I just know,' Anna answered.

Mahler shook his head, walked out into the kitchen and got himself a beer. There had been several times since they had come here that Anna reported things that she
just knew
about what Elias wanted, and it irritated Mahler that she was using this supposed ability to slow down his training.

‘Elias doesn't like that top ... Elias wants me to apply the cream ... '

When Mahler asked her how she could know that, he always received the same answer: she just knew. He opened the beer, drank half and looked out the window. The tropical rain had not been enough to save the trees. Many were losing their leaves even though it was only the middle of August.

This time he thought Anna was right. Many of Elias' old toys had not stirred the slightest interest, so probably it was the movement inside the car that had awakened him. What use could they make of that?

Anna left Elias on the floor with the car and came into the kitchen.

'Sometimes,' Mahler said, still looking out of the window, 'sometimes I don't believe you want him to get better.'

He heard Anna draw breath to reply, and knew more or less what she was going to say. Before she had time to say it she was interrupted by a sharp crack from the hall.

Elias was sitting on the floor with the car in his hands. Somehow he had managed to break away the entire upper part of the chassis, so that parts and wires were revealed. Before Mahler could stop him he got hold of the battery pack and tore it away, holding it up to his eyes.

Mahler threw his arms out, looked at Anna.

'Well,' he said. 'Are you happy now?'

Elias had taken apart another battery-operated car before Mahler thought of getting a Brio train set with wooden pieces. The engine that came with it was so neatly made, with so few moving parts, that it resisted the attempts of Elias' still-weak fingers to deconstruct it.

That morning he had been in Norrtalje and bought yet another engine. Now he attached a strip of masking tape across the middle of the kitchen table in order to create a demarcation, two zones, and placed a tank engine in One. The first step of the autism training described in the book was a mimicking exercise. He laid three straight track pieces in each zone and then carried Elias out from the bedroom, placing him on a kitchen chair.

Elias looked at the window, toward the garden where Anna was mowing the lawn.

'Look,' Mahler said and held his engine out toward Elias. No reaction. He put the engine down on the table and started it. It made a hollow buzzing sound as it moved slowly across the surface. Elias turned his head toward the sound, reached his hand to it. Mahler took the engine away.

'There.'

He pointed at the identical engine in front of Elias. Elias leaned over the table and tried to get a hold of the engine still buzzing in Mahler's hand. He turned it off and pointed to Elias' engine again.

'There. That one is yours.'

Elias fell back in the chair, expressionless. Mahler stretched out his arm and clicked the on button of the engine in Elias' zone. It droned on across

the table until Elias clumsily put his hand over it, grabbed hold of it, lifted it to his eyes and tried to pry off the turning wheels.

'No, no.'

Mahler walked around the table and managed to coax the train out of Elias' stiff hand, and placed it back on the table.

'Look.'

He put his own engine out on the other side of the table and turned it on. Elias stretched for it.

'There,' Mahler pointed to Elias' stationary train. 'There. Now you do that.'

Elias heaved his entire upper body across the table, grabbed hold of Mahler's engine and started trying to take it apart. Mahler did not like standing at this angle; there was a hole in Elias' head where his ear had been. He rubbed his eyes.

Why don't you understand? Why are you so stupid?

The engine made a crunching sound as Elias unexpectedly managed to break it open. The batteries fell to the floor.

'No, Elias. No!'

Mahler grabbed the pieces out of Elias' hand, angry despite himself; he was starting to get so awfully tired of all this. He smashed his own engine into the table and pointed with pedantic precision at the on button.

'Here. You start it here. Here.'

He turned it on. The train inched its way over to Elias and he took it, breaking off one of the wheels.

I can't bear it. He can't. He can't do anything.

'Why do you have to break everything?' he said out loud. 'Why do you have to destroy .. .'

Suddenly Elias bent his hand back and threw the engine at Mahler's face. It struck him right across the mouth, splitting his lip, and from behind a red membrane he heard it bounce against the floor as the metal taste rose inside his head. He stared at Elias with a swelling anger. Elias' dark brown lips were pulled back in a grin. He looked ... mean.

'What are you doing?' Mahler said. 'What are you doing?'

Elias' head was going back and forth as if shaken from behind by an invisible force and the legs of the chair teetered, hitting the floor. Before Mahler had time to do anything Elias collapsed, completely floppy. He collapsed on the chair and slid down on the floor as if his skeleton had suddenly been transformed into jelly. In slow motion, Mahler saw the chair fall after him, had time to realise that the back of it was going to strike Elias across the cheek before a whining sound pierced his skull like a dentist's drill and forced him to shut his eyes.

His hands went up to his temples and pressed, but the whining noise disappeared, as quickly as it had come. Elias was lying on the floor with the chair over him, absolutely still.

Mahler hurried over and lifted the chair away. 'Elias? Elias?'

The door to the verandah was opened and Anna entered. 'What are you .. .'

She threw herself on her knees beside Elias, stroking his cheeks.

Mahler blinked, looked around the kitchen, and a shiver crawled up his spine.

There is someone here.

The whining returned, weaker this time. Switched off. Elias lifted his hand to Anna and she took it, kissing it. She looked angrily at Mahler, still turning his head this way and that to catch sight of someone he could not see. He licked his lip, which was already starting to swell up, the skin slick as plastic.

Gone.

Anna tugged on his shirt. 'You aren't allowed to do that.'

'I'm not allowed to ... what?'

'Dislike him.'

Mahler's fingers flickered, pointing indeterminately toward different areas of the kitchen. 'There was someone ... here.'

The perception of a presence was still palpable in the skin of his back. Someone had been watching him and Elias. He stood up, walked over to the counter and rinsed his face with cold water. Once he had wiped himself with a kitchen towel his head felt clearer. He sat on a stool.

'I can't handle this.'

'No,' Anna said. 'I can tell.'

Mahler picked up the half-destroyed engine and weighed it in his hand. 'I don't just mean ... this. I mean ... ' his eyes narrowed, he looked at Anna. 'There is something. There is something I don't understand. Something else is going on here.'

'You don't want to listen,' Anna said. 'You've already made up your mind.'

She shifted Elias to the side so that he was lying on the rag rug in front of the stove. When you looked closely it was unmistakeable: Elias might have made some progress, nearing a kind of consciousness, but his body had shrunk further. The arms poking out of the pyjamas were just bone covered in parchment-like skin, his face a skull, painted and garnished with a wig. It was impossible to imagine a soft, wet, working brain inside.

Mahler made a fist and banged it against his leg.

'What is it I don't understand? What is it. I don't. Understand?'

'That he is dead,' Anna said.

Mahler was about to argue the point when there was the clomp of clogs on the stoop and the front door opened.

'Yoo-hoo in there!'

Mahler and Anna's eyes met and for a second they were united in panic. Aronsson's clogs thundered on into the house and Mahler rushed up from the table, placing himself as an obstacle in the kitchen doorway.

Aronsson looked up and pointed to Mahler's lip. 'Well, well. Been in a fight, have you?' He laughed at his own wit and removed his hat, fanning his face. 'How are you holding up in the heat?'

'OK,' Mahler said. 'It's just, we're a bit busy right now.'

'I understand,' Aronsson said. 'I won't interrupt. I just wanted to hear if they'd picked up your garbage.'

'Yes.'

'I see. But not mine. Not for two weeks. I've called and complained and they say they're coming out, but they don't come. And in this heat. They can't keep carrying on like this.'

'No.'

Aronsson knit his brows. He sensed something. In theory, Mahler could simply have wrapped his arms around him, carried him to the door and thrown him out. Later he would wish that this was what he had done. Aronsson peered past him.

'Fine company, I see. The whole family. That's lovely.'

'We were just going to eat.'

'I see, I see. Well, don't let me interrupt. I just want to say hello .. .'

Aronsson tried to get past, but Mahler put his hand against the door post so that his arm created a barrier. Aronsson blinked. 'What's wrong with you, Gustav? I just want to say hello to the girl.' Anna got up quickly, intending to greet Aronsson in the doorway so he wouldn't have to enter the kitchen. When Mahler lowered his arm to let her past, Aronsson ducked in.

'Well, goodness me,' he said and held out his hand to Anna. 'It's been a while hasn't it?'