Authors: John Ajvide Lindqvist
It wasn’t exactly a match made in heaven.
Perhaps some of you might remember ‘Summer Rain’ from 1969. It managed to get to number five in the Swedish chart, and it’s probably on one of those compilation albums you can pick up in the supermarket for next to nothing.
When they first got together in 1965, and also started to work together musically, they simply called themselves Lennart & Laila, until they changed their name in 1972. They had a couple more songs that just nudged the bottom of the charts, enough to get them quite a few gigs, but they never really took off.
Then they got a new manager. He was twenty years younger than his predecessor, and the first piece of advice he gave them was to change their name. The old one sounded like a hokey downmarket version of Ike and Tina Turner, and the business of listing names had gone as far as it could go with Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Titch. No; now it was all about something short and clever.
And so from 1972 onwards, Lennart and Laila went by the name of The Others. Lennart liked the feeling of coming from the outside, coming up from below, that was inherent in the name. Laila hated it and thought it was stupid. They didn’t play the kind of music it suggested: they were more like The Lindberg Sisters than The Who, and they had no plans to smash up their acoustic guitars on stage.
But The Others it was, and it suited Lennart perfectly, because he
wanted a fresh start. He had written a few songs that broke out of the old straitjacket with harmonies that put them somewhere between the Swedish chart stuff and ‘Top of the Pops’. Something new—and what could signal a new direction more clearly than a new name? He shrugged off Lennart & Laila like an old raincoat and settled down to write their debut album.
By the spring of 1973, the album had been recorded and pressed. When Lennart held the first copy in his hands, he felt prouder than ever before. It was the first record he had made where he was happy with every one of the tracks.
The first single was ‘Tell Me’, a subtle hybrid of the classic Swedish dance band sound—saxophone, three chords—mixed with Beatles-style sections in a minor key, and a bridge that was almost like a folk song. It was a sure-fire Swedish chart hit, but so much more at the same time. Something for everyone.
At the beginning of May it was played on the radio for the first time, along with three other songs tipped to make the Swedish chart the following week: Thorleifs, Streaplers, Tropicos. And The Others. Lennart shed a few tears. It wasn’t until he heard the song on the radio that he realised how good it really was.
A couple of days later he and Laila had a gig booked. The promoter had asked them to used their old name, because that was what people were familiar with. Lennart had no objections; he saw it as a farewell to old times. From Sunday onwards they would be singing a new song, in more ways than one.
So they left Jerry, who was seven years old at the time, with Laila’s parents and drove the tour bus down to the park in Eskilstuna. It wasn’t a major gig, just the two of them, Tropicos, and some local talent called Bert-Görans.
They had played with Tropicos on a couple of occasions in the past, and knew both Roland, the lead singer, and the rest of the lads in the band. There was a fair amount of back-slapping and congratulation aimed in Lennart’s direction, because they all listened to the Swedish top twenty. Lennart managed to force out something positive
about Tropicos’ latest song, ‘A Summer Without You’, even though it sounded exactly the same as everything else. They didn’t even write their own songs.
The evening went without a hitch. Lennart & Laila were even given the final spot, which meant that they had one up on Tropicos, so to speak, and they performed with considerable verve. Laila sang better than ever, perhaps because she knew it was a kind of swan song. Lennart had explained that they would never play these songs again, so as Laila tugged at the heartstrings with the final notes of ‘Summer Rain’ which ended their set, several members of the audience had tears in their eyes, and the applause was unusually enthusiastic.
Lennart had considered finishing off by mentioning that they would be called The Others from now on, and ‘don’t forget to listen in on Sunday’, but in light of the applause it just seemed petty. He allowed Laila to have her swan song in peace.
Afterwards they had a few beers and a bit of a party. Lennart got talking to Göran, the guitarist with Bert-Görans, who also had greater musical ambitions than the rigid chart formula usually allowed. He expressed great admiration for Lennart’s skilful interweaving of listener-friendly dance band tunes with what he called, ‘more continental elements’. He was convinced this was the way forward, and they raised a glass to Lennart’s future success.
When Lennart went to buy the next round, he couldn’t find his wallet. He asked Göran to wait and hurried back to the other room, purring like a cat inside. He couldn’t help it, there was something special about being praised by someone who actually knew what they were talking about. And Göran had proved himself to be a pretty good guitarist, so surely it was just possible that…
Lennart opened the door and his life was kicked in a completely different direction. He was looking Laila straight in the face as she stood there, bent over a table, her fingers spread wide. Behind her was Roland with his trousers around his ankles and his face turned up towards the ceiling as if he were suffering some kind of cramp.
Lennart had obviously disturbed them at a critical moment, because when Laila caught sight of him and launched herself across the table in a reflexive door-closing motion, Roland groaned as he was wrenched out of her. He grabbed hold of his cock, but couldn’t manage to stop the ejaculation; the semen spurted, arching across the room to land on a make-up mirror. Lennart watched the sticky fluid work its way down towards a jar of fake tan which presumably belonged to Roland.
He looked at Laila. The fingers with the bright red nails still clutched the table, and a couple of strands of her hair had stuck to her cheeks. He looked at Roland and Roland looked…tired. As if he just wanted to lie down and go to sleep. His hand was still holding his stiff cock. It was bigger than Lennart’s. Much bigger.
As Lennart slammed the door shut, all he could see in his mind’s eye was Roland’s cock. It followed him along the corridor, out into the car park, into the car. He switched on the windscreen wipers as if he were seeking some physical help to erase the image, but the cock forced its way through, violating him. It was that big.
He had never seen an erect penis other than his own. He had thought he was pretty much OK. Now he knew this wasn’t the case. He tried to think what it might feel like to have a…a pole like that thrust inside you. It was difficult to imagine that it would be a pleasant experience, but Laila’s face, in the brief second it took her to switch from enjoyment to terror, had told a different story. He had never seen that expression on her face. He didn’t have the necessary tool to evoke it.
The wipers squeaked against the dry windscreen, and Lennart switched them off. The cock had gone, replaced by Laila’s face. So pretty. So bloody pretty and so desirable. So ugly in its contorted ecstasy. He felt as if he were being ripped in two. He wanted to start the car and drive somewhere, lie down in a ditch with a bottle of whisky and die. Instead he just sat there, his arms locked around his stomach, rocking, and whimpering like a puppy.
After ten minutes the passenger door opened. Laila got in and
sat down. She had tidied her hair. They sat next to one another in silence for a while. Lennart carried on rocking back and forth, but had stopped whimpering. Eventually Laila said, ‘Can’t you hit me or something?’
Lennart shook his head, and a sob escaped from his lips. Laila placed a hand on his knee. ‘Please? Can’t you just slap me a couple of times? It’s OK.’
It was an ordinary Wednesday night and people were starting to leave the car park. Cheerful revellers strolled by. Someone spotted Laila in the car and waved. She waved back. Lennart glared at her hand, resting on his knee, then pushed it away. ‘Has this happened before?’
‘What do you mean? With Roland?’
An icy stalactite detached itself in the area between Lennart’s chest and throat, tumbled down through the empty space in the centre of his body and shattered in his stomach. Something in her tone.
‘With others?’
Laila folded her hands in her lap and sat in silence, watching a lone woman tottering along on too-high heels. Then she sighed and said, ‘So don’t you want to hit me, then?’
Lennart started the car.
The next three days were almost unbearable. They couldn’t talk, so they kept busy. Lennart did little chores in the garden and Laila went running. Jerry went from one to the other, trying to lighten the atmosphere by telling Bellman stories, but all he got in response were sorrowful smiles.
Running was Laila’s way of keeping fit, keeping slim and supple ‘for you and the audience’, as she had once said. The day after the gig Lennart was oiling the garden furniture as Laila passed him, wearing her blue windbreaker. He put the brush down and followed her with his gaze. The trousers and jacket were unnecessarily tight, and her long blonde hair was caught up in a pony-tail that bounced up and down on her back as she jogged along the village road.
He knew what this was all about. She was on her way to an assignation of some sort. A man was waiting for her in the bushes somewhere. In a little while she would meet him there and then they would be at it like rabbits. Or perhaps she just enjoyed running along in her tight clothes, making sure men were looking at her. Or perhaps it was both. She got them to look at her, then she ran into their houses and let them screw her, one after the other.
The oil splashed everywhere as Lennart slapped it onto the garden table with his brush. Back and forth, back and forth. In and out, in and out. The pictures flickered and excited, constricting his lungs and making it hard to breathe. He was going mad. That’s the kind of thing people say, but it really did feel like that. His consciousness was standing on the threshold of a dark room. Inside there was oblivion, silence and—right in the corner—a little music box that played ‘Auld Lang Syne’. He would sit in the darkness and turn the handle around and around, until he fell asleep forever.
But he kept oiling the table and when he finished the table he started on the chairs and when he finished the chairs Laila came home, red and sweaty from all the big cocks she had been riding. While she was stretching he secretly looked over her running clothes, searching for damp or dried-in stains. They were there if he wanted to see them, but he didn’t want to see them, so instead he looked at the half-rotten porch step and decided to build a new one.
Sunday. The Swedish chart countdown.
Lennart woke up with butterflies in his stomach, which was a welcome change from the demons that had been tearing at his guts for the past few days. As he got out of bed he felt only ordinary honest-to-goodness nervousness. This was the day when The Others would step into the limelight. This was the day when he and Laila should have been sitting here holding hands, waiting expectantly for eleven o’clock when the countdown began.
That wasn’t going to happen, so instead he set to work ripping up the old porch step. He struggled and wrenched with the crowbar until five to eleven, when Laila came out with the small battery-operated
radio and sat down at the table next to him.
Apart from the utterly silent drive home from Eskilstuna, this was the first time since the incident that they had even sat near each other. Jerry was at a friend’s birthday party, so there was no chance of him disturbing the moment. Lennart kept on working, while Laila sat with her hands on her knees, watching him. They heard the familiar theme tune, and a drop of sweat dripped from Lennart’s armpit and ran down his side.
‘Fingers crossed,’ said Laila.
‘Mmm,’ said Lennart, attacking some nails so rusty the heads came off when he applied the crowbar.
‘It’s a wonderful song,’ said Laila. ‘I might not have told you properly, but it’s a fantastic song.’
‘Right,’ said Lennart.
He couldn’t help himself; Laila’s words of praise did mean something to him after all. He couldn’t quite see how they were going to move on, but at least they were sitting here waiting for their song. That had to mean something.
A couple of songs that were bubbling under were mentioned, then the presenter went through the chart. Number ten, nine, eight, seven, six. Lasse Berghagen, Hootenanny Singers and so on. Same old stuff. Lennart had heard them all dozens of times. Then it came. His heart started pounding wildly as he heard Kent Finell say, ‘And at number five we have this week’s only new entry…’
Lennart held his breath. The birds fell silent in the trees. The bees sat motionless on their flowers, waiting.
‘“A Summer Without You” by Tropicos!’
The usual four notes that sounded just like any other song. Laila said, ‘What a shame!’ but Lennart didn’t hear her. He stared at a rotten plank of wood and felt something inside him take on the same consistency as it shrivelled and died. Somewhere in the space outside him someone was singing:
What do sunshine and warmth mean to me
When I know this will be a summer without you.
Roland. It was Roland who was singing. Tropicos. Number five. Highest new entry. Would keep on climbing. The Others. Nothing. Hadn’t made the chart. No fresh start. It was sinking in.
Without you, what’s a summer without you…
The world wasn’t ready. All he could do was accept that fact. A calmness bordering on physical numbness came over Lennart. He glanced at Laila. Her eyes were closed as she listened to Roland’s voice. The hint of a smile played on her lips.
She’s listening to his voice and thinking about his cock.
Laila opened her eyes and blinked. But it was too late. He had seen. Suddenly he felt his arm jerk. The crowbar swung in a wide arc and landed on Laila’s knee. She gasped and opened her mouth to scream.