Some Kind of Peace (32 page)

Markus looks fervent, as if it is important for him to convey to me what led him to this decision.

“And… do you still have your principles? Do you still know what good and evil mean?”

“I’ve been a policeman a few years now, so of course my thoughts and opinions have changed. I know that the world is not black and white. That people are not solely evil or good. And that even good people commit evil actions.”

Markus looks weary, and I think about what his day-to-day must be like.

“How do you cope?”

“How do
you
cope, Siri? You’re a psychotherapist. Every day you see people who suffer and who have already survived God knows what kind of misery. But you cope, don’t you? And I cope. I cope because I have a life outside my work. Because I know that life consists of more than violence and death. And I cope because I know I’m doing the right thing. I’m a good policeman. I do a good job.”

Markus falls silent and looks at me as if seeking confirmation for what he just said. I nod slowly, because I think that somehow I understand what he means, where he’s coming from.

I watch him sitting there across from me at the lopsided kitchen table, and suddenly I imagine his smooth, pale face approaching mine, him leaning forward to kiss me lightly on the lips with his well-formed, lovely mouth. His soft lips pressing against mine. The thought comes out of nowhere and I look at him, his blond hair and blue eyes, his Ramones T-shirt. For a moment, I think about it, that he is wearing this T-shirt even though he is too young to really remember the band.

Much too young.

I know this to be true, but I don’t want to think about it.

Our eyes meet and once again we stare intensely at each other. Markus reaches across the table, his hand touching mine. His fingertips graze the back of my hand and I think about Stefan and how infinitely painful it is to lose the one you love. Will I dare take the chance to love again and risk the pain of a loss anew?

“Why did you come here, Markus? What do you want from me?”

Markus looks self-conscious. Embarrassed. But I know that I must hear the answer.

“I came here because there’s something about you, Siri. Something that moves me. This means that I think about you more than I ought to. This means that I want to be with you.”

He falls silent and looks down at our intertwined hands.

“It’s not so simple,” I answer. “Us. The investigation. We shouldn’t—”

The words line up in my mouth, but it’s as if I can’t get myself to actually say them out loud.

“I know, but… I can’t, don’t want to… worry about that.”

He looks serious and I know that he means what he says. The music has stopped and the only sound now is the branches banging against the living room window. I get up from my chair and go around the table without releasing his hand. As he takes me in his arms, I wonder what has held us back for so long.

•  •  •

Later, when his sweaty body is on top of mine, I have other thoughts. Darker thoughts. I think that I deserve this young body, the solid muscles on his back and buttocks and the unwavering energy. I deserve his desire, his convulsive breathing in my ear, and his attention. My life has been so miserable the last few years that I deserve him, like a hardworking laborer deserves his pay or an athlete his medal.

It’s early morning, and the bedroom is filled with a warm dawn light, different from the cold, blue-black morning rays that usually seep in through the curtains. Without looking out the window, I know that it has snowed. Only snow can make late-autumn dawn change colors this way. The house is completely quiet. Markus is lying beside me. He is breathing almost soundlessly and he is motionless. I can make out his face in the gossamer light. Where the pillow has pressed against his pale cheeks, light-pink lines run across his face. He looks so calm, so different, almost like a child.

My room is transformed. I have lived here alone for more than a year. No one has slept in my bed with me. This was the room that shared my memories of Stefan. Now there is another man here, sleeping in my bed.

Markus is so unlike Stefan, a completely different man, but not necessarily the wrong one. There was a time when I thought I could never love anyone again. That my love was used up and I had no more to give. I thought that my feelings had died with Stefan, scattered in the memorial grove along with his ashes.

We take a walk around the bay. Big snowflakes continue to fall silently around us. The bay lies open, the water is still and black. The trees are covered in white snow. It is beautiful but fleeting. Presumably, the snow
will melt by tomorrow. I walk in silence because I don’t know what to say. I think about Sara and the fact that her death brought Markus into my life. Is it allowed to build happiness on the death of another? I know the thought is irrational, but it’s there anyway. Can anything good come out of these horrible events—
may
anything good come out of them? Markus seems to pick up on my thoughts and looks questioningly at me. I decide not to say anything and he accepts it.

I wonder how we would appear to an observer: a couple in love, hand in hand, going for a walk in the snow. Suddenly I feel a strong sense of unease, as if someone really is watching us, and start looking around for signs of someone secretly following in our footsteps. Naturally, Markus notices my mood shift; still, I am surprised by his question.

“Do you feel it, too?”

His gaze traces the outlines of the trees.

“Yes. Someone’s here.”

My answer comes instantly, and now I am sure that I am right. I have no idea what makes me feel so certain, but nature no longer seems untouched out here. Maybe it is the blackbirds that suddenly fly up between the trees over by my house. Maybe it’s the silence that suddenly seems less compact. I feel ill at ease.

“Shall we head back?”

I squeeze Markus’s hand and feel pressure in response. It is almost a half-mile walk back to the house, and the trail is slippery with snow. It takes longer than usual. We walk as quickly as we can; without speaking we help each other over roots and patches of ice.

When we come to the clearing where my house is, we slow down. My eyes scan the house, which appears to have winter clothes on, a summer house with a warm white comforter on the roof. Thin, white smoke coils from the chimney and light is beaming from all the windows. Of course all the lights are on, even though it’s just a gray November day. The whole picture looks like an idyllic fairy tale.

As we stand there quietly observing the scene I suddenly see it: On the wooden steps in front of the French doors is a small, curled-up gray figure. It takes a few seconds before I realize what I am looking at.

“It’s Ziggy.”

I rush ahead to welcome my long-lost cat, but Markus grabs my arm and carefully pulls me back.

“Stay where you are. There are footprints around the house. We don’t want to disturb them. I have to call the technicians.”

He already has his cell phone in his hand.

“Who cares about footprints? My cat has come back.”

“Siri, don’t go—”

But it’s too late. I don’t listen to him. I run toward Ziggy, who seems to be peacefully looking out at the garden from his spot on the steps.

Only when I get really close do I sense something wrong. Ziggy sits unnaturally still, not reacting when I call to him. When I finally reach him and carefully extend my hand to stroke his back, I am surprised by how completely stiff he is. No, not just stiff, but
hard
. He falls over with a hollow thud, like a piece of wood falling to the ground, and remains in the same fixed position.

Then I understand.

He is stuffed.

Someone has stuffed my cat.

I can’t sleep at all that night, or the following nights either. The thought of Ziggy, of the fate he met, keeps me awake, and I ask myself again and again how anyone could do such a thing to a poor innocent animal.

I have finally given up the battle to stay in my house. Not even I can deny the simple truth any longer. It is dangerous for me to be here, someone is seriously after me. The whole thing is so incredibly obvious and I no longer understand why I tried to deny it.

Aina has arranged an apartment for me. A friend of hers was invited to be a guest researcher at an Italian university for six months, and his studio on Hantverkargatan is now vacant. Empty. At my disposal.

The apartment is small and spartan, but functional. Still, it is not my home. It is a place where I can stay until the police arrest the man they are hunting. If they catch him. I have secretly started to doubt they ever will. I am no longer certain about anything. I cannot remember my life as it was before. Before Sara died. Before my pet was transformed into a museum piece, before Marianne was in a coma and my lawn was covered with blood. It feels as if it’s always been this way, as if I have always been threatened. The sensation is so familiar that it has come to define me. I am Siri. I am hunted. Threatened.

Persecuted.

I still haven’t told my parents or sisters anything. There is no law that says adult children have to inform their parents of every single thing. Maybe I have a moral obligation to tell them what is happening, but I can’t cope with their suffocating concern right now.

Even more guilt to bear.

It’s my fault if they worry.

Instead, Markus comes to pick me up, with my bag and three boxes, and helps me settle in.

The apartment has a furnished hall, with a desk and a chair. The walls are covered with shelves filled with books on intellectual history and philosophy.
There is a living room with a 1930s-style couch with slender wooden arms and a small round table. A tiny TV, a sleeping alcove with a bed so narrow I can’t see how anyone can sleep in it. And more books. In the kitchen there’s a table with two chairs. As a hint at the approaching holiday season, someone hung up a Christmas star in the living room window. Once again I think that this is not my home. It is a refuge. An extremely temporary refuge.

From the day we found Ziggy, Markus seems to be constantly by my side. I am unaccustomed to his nearness. But also grateful. Carefully and hesitantly, we are trying to find the balance between the circumstances that brought us together and what we feel for each other.

•  •  •

It is nighttime. A raw, cold, damp rainy night. But darkness never really manages to overwhelm the city, not the way it does in my cottage. It is never fully night here, just a different kind of daytime in which artificial light keeps the darkness at bay.

Markus has come to help me assemble a shelf. It’s not that I can’t assemble it myself, but there are no tools in the apartment. Even though Markus has been here for several hours, we haven’t started on the shelf yet. Instead, we ate the leftovers of yesterday’s take-out pizza, drank sour Italian wine, and made love in the narrow, uncomfortable sleeping alcove.

It bothers me that nothing in the apartment is mine, that everything is on loan. Even the sheets we are lying on—now damp and pushed together in a tangled pile at the foot of the bed—are on loan.

The window facing Hantverkargatan is open, and blasts of brisk air race around our naked legs like invisible hairy nocturnal animals. Markus’s hand is on my neck, slowly stroking my short hair as he looks out over the dingy little room with an empty gaze.

I have to bite my tongue not to ask the question that I imagine women always ask. But I decide that I really don’t care what he’s thinking. The moment is enough. I want to rest in this perfect moment and not tear apart the fragile silence to demand some kind of affirmation.

And why fish for proof of his affection? I myself don’t know what this is, the fragile but irresistibly enticing attraction that exists between us. Is it love, or are we only borrowing each other’s bodies to fill all those black holes we feel inside?

Somewhere in the distance I hear sirens. They seem to wake Markus from his reverie. He pulls himself up to rest on his elbow and looks at me as if he only just realized that I was lying beside him, kissing first one eyelid, then the other.

Tenderly.

“You know, you ought to let us protect you. Even if you’ve moved, you still need protection.”

I exhale a deep sigh of irritation and something else. It bothers me that he doesn’t respect my decision and that he still thinks he knows what I need better than I do. That he, so young and with such little experience of life, thinks I am in need.

“We’ve already had this conversation. I don’t want the police around here. One cop is enough.”

“Very funny.” Markus sounds offended and removes his hand from my neck. “Don’t you understand what kind of risk you’re exposing yourself to?”

Slowly I sit up, pull on my panties, and wrap the blanket tightly around my shoulders. I’m freezing.

“Listen to me. If I let him—or her—limit my life to that degree, then he has already won.”

“I’m sorry if I seem dense, I really don’t get how you can see this as a defeat. Managing risks… just shows how strong you really are.”

“Great, perfect. Then I guess we’ve proved that that’s just what I’m not—strong, that is. Because if I’m not up to having cops around… then I’m weak.”