Sample translation - Hedlund Literary Agency

Lollo
Linna Johansson
Original publisher: Modernista, September 2015
Translated from the Swedish by Agnes Broome - agnesbroome@gmail.com
It had gone five before she finally came home. The sound of her tiptoeing over the pile of
shoes in the hall, the tinkling of her keys in the little bowl on the dresser.
I was twisting and turning on the sofa. Checked my mobile again. Maybe I should get
up, just to say hi? I might as well.
I found her in the bedroom, hunched over the table in the dark. Moving about like a
tiny burglar, her red hair swinging back and forth across her back. She rummaged through her
notes, intensely focused, then picked up a pen and jotted something down in the faint light of
the desk lamp.
I cleared my throat. She spun round.
“Knocking”, she gasped, her face stiff with fright, “ever heard of that?”
“I’m sorry”, I stammered. “I was just… on my way to the loo.”
A deathly silence. We stared at each other. Distance, antagonism, lies. Before and
after.
So, you should always talk about things, huh? I thought. But you never tell me shit.
1
Part I
2
1
Aspudden, my Aspudden. How could I ever describe Aspudden so you’d understand?
“At the end of all things there’s Aspudden”, I wrote in a poem once, back when I was
into that kind of thing. I suppose that was a bit of an exaggeration. But it’s true that Aspudden
isn’t Midsommarkransen, Årsta or one of the other burbs lined up in a neat little row all the
way into town. Aspudden isn’t “in between”, “next to” or “near”. And those aren’t just
hammy lines from the notebook of a twelve-year old wannabe writer; Aspudden drifts along
all by itself, or to be more precise, on the other side of Årsta Field, a straw-coloured expanse
two and a half mile long and one across, which could have linked this place with the rest of
Stockholm, were it not for the fact that the ground, as it turns out, is unfit for any kind of use,
for some reason or the other.
Here, on the other side of the tractor tracks, puddles, and stray tufts of milletgrass,
you’ll find Aspudden. And I don’t know if one thing has anything to with the other, but in
Aspudden it seems as though time has stood still. Here it’s all still old, cramped Jugendstil
houses built almost exactly one hundred years ago. The blocks are enclosed like in the city
centre, the bay windows are plumply pleasant and the facades covered in Christmas-green
Hedera Helix. The town centre is tiny; there’s less to see here than in most backwater
provincial towns. No mall, nowhere to hang out properly. At one point, they did start tearing
down the old defunct swimming pool to make room for a “family park”, but the work was
never finished and so for years, the remains of the shower rooms have just sat there: detached
pipes and broken pieces of wall, piles of cracked tiles scattered by the side of the road. The
ruins of the swimming pool is one of two odd monuments in Aspudden. The other is a
sculpture, an enormous, obese woman made of glass fibre, erected by some art students in the
seventies. The statue is the first thing to greet you when you come out of the underground and
I suppose it was radical way back when, but now it’s just there, like an exclamation point, big
and inscrutable. There are a lot of old things in Aspudden, but nothing new, nothing forwardlooking. The media could have played on that, I sometimes think, all the resigned weariness
seeping out from this place that seems impervious to rejuvenation: all the things Lidija and I
loved about Aspudden, all the things we ultimately found it increasingly difficult to tolerate.
But they didn’t. Because they found another angle, a more accessible approach. They found
Vinterviken.
“This looks like a serene spot, but it isn’t”, were the first words I heard when I came
back home. The reporter was dressed in a dark blue suit and her eyes were unnaturally wide
and fixed on what is also part of Aspudden: Vinterviken. “This is where a young woman was
found stabbed”, she intoned with an affected vibrato, clutching her microphone. Vinterviken,
our Vinterviken, the dark magical bay that has been Lidija’s and my safe haven for so long. I
looked at the still, oily surface, and the clusters of floodlights bobbing across it. I couldn’t
make out exactly where the reporter was standing and I didn’t really want to know, so I
turned the TV off. Tomorrow, I thought, this will all be over. Tomorrow everything will go
back to normal.
How was I to know that things had only just begun? That soon they would be talking
about “nocturnal activities” and “wayward youths”? That soon they would be talking about
us? I couldn’t have known. And if there is one thing I’m still struggling with, it’s this: that all
the hysteria was about us, me and Lidija, our lives and our Aspudden.
3
*
It was me and it was Lidija and it was Aspudden. Well, there were obviously others too but
most importantly, there was us. Maybe you think you know something about us because
you’ve read about us. You don’t. For example, the papers called me “the inexperienced” and
Lidija “the instigator”. That wasn’t true. Very little of what was written about us was true.
That’s why I’ve decided to tell you about us, about what we did, and about what really
happened.
My name is Lollo. I’m twenty-eight years old, but back then, when this story took
place, I was twenty. My parents got divorced early and my younger sister Emma and I grew
up with our mum in a two bed in Aspudden. An alright childhood in many ways, or at least
not too bad. I didn’t like my sister but I did like my mum, who was the very picture of a
traditional mother. She did everything for us; worked herself to the bone, gave us money
whenever she could, let us have our own rooms even though that meant she had to sleep in
the living room.
What is there to say about me? I wasn’t particularly pretty. Nor did I, unlike Emma,
who even back then surrounded herself with half the kids on our block, have many friends.
But it was sometimes said about me that I was intelligent. I liked looking things up in atlases
and dreamed, as kids do, about becoming an explorer. I liked to read as well – The Call of the
Wild and various Dickensian young adult books about orphans on the run. The stories
inspired me to write, fairy tales and little short stories about adventures and expeditions to
foreign lands. When I got older, I wrote some poetry, and I actually had a poem published in
a literary magazine for young people.
I don’t know when I realised I was nothing special, that my interests were just a
symptom of curiosity, not indicative of real talent. I guess it just gradually crept up on me. I
abandoned the atlases. Eventually I abandoned literature. I discovered I preferred watching
TV, soaps and various reality shows, which were hitting their stride around that time. It
turned out I had nothing going for me academically. My grades were average, no teacher ever
noticed me. Not even when it came to essay writing did I make an impression. I agonised
over that quite a lot. If I was no longer good at anything – then who was I? That suddenly felt
very unclear.
Still, after high school, mum managed to talk me into applying to study literature. I
had “talent”, she said; it was still “in there”. I didn’t believe her and so it didn’t go very well.
I didn’t understand the books we read and hated the other students, a bunch of self-important,
inner city girls in duffel coats and no make-up who all worshipped Virginia Wolf. After half
a term, I gave up and never went back.
How to explain what happened next? I lost my spark? Became depressed? It might
have looked that way. I’m thinking now, though, that I actually just continued along a
trajectory I had settled on long before. Either way, I ended up stuck in my room, on my bed,
in front of the TV. Eventually I got back in touch with Lidija – we had drifted apart during
my months at uni. She had recently quit an internship (something to do with “office supplies”
from what I gathered – but then she never told me any details) and was consequently as idle
as I was. We tackled this problem by establishing a new routine: meeting up down by the
water in Vinterviken with a beer.
Mum’s first reaction was concern, which turned to exasperation at my obvious lack of
ambition. What was I doing? Wasn’t this the time when I was supposed to get on with things,
grow up? To placate her, I got myself a job with the Council as some sort of teaching
assistant for secondary students. Spotty teenagers, same old vandalised toilets as before – I
got out of that gig right quick. During the year that followed, I went through a respectable
4
number of workplaces, each more insufferable than the next. Citymail and the greasy old
sandwich shop by Gullmarsplan, doggy day care and call centres – more than I care to
remember. Turning up for work in some cold, draughty place, being forced to make small
talk with colleagues you have nothing in common with… no thanks. As time wore on, my
periods of unemployment were gradually extended, to the point where my intermittent temp
jobs served as breaks from my normal life rather than the other way around. Mum was still on
my case, but her nagging eventually died down. What can you do about someone who
doesn’t want to do anything? Nothing at all. You’re thinking she could have kicked me out
and she did actually threaten to do that once, as the climax of one of our more heated
confrontations. But of course she never followed through – my mum’s just not like that.
*
Lidija, my darling Lidija. She stormed into our classroom and my life in the third week of the
second year of high school. A bleak September day. Our class teacher was writing equations
on the board before a hushed audience; I was in my usual seat at the back of the room, staring
out a dirty window. When she pulled out the chair next to mine with a loud “Ćao!”, which
made even the swots in the first row turn and round their lips into startled O’s, I instantly
knew I was trading in Evelina, whom I’d been stuck with since preschool and had disliked
from the day we met.
No one understood what I saw in Lidija. I couldn’t understand what they didn’t see in
her. Lidija: shameless, no-holds-barred, non-stop hilarious. And so tall – I love tall women.
With Lidija, there was lot of everything: legs, noise, opinions. Her distinguishing
characteristic – if it’s possible to point to just one thing about Lidija that was particularly
characteristic – was her voice, which ranged from high to low, from shrill and penetrating to
dull and flat, and she used this riotous instrument to chatter away wildly in a number of
languages: Swedish and Serbian, sometimes English, Swedish with both Serbian and English
elements and vice versa.
What did Lidija see in me? Nothing at all would be my guess. I think it was just
happenstance that she ended up next to me and she stayed mostly because no one else would
put up with her. Either way, it doesn’t matter. We liked drinking together. We had no grand
ambitions and I think it was this, our lack of drive and momentum, that brought us together.
We weren’t on our way to anything, something different, bigger or more important. Neither
one of us had plans like Evelina, who liked to spend her lunch breaks talking about
everything she was going to do soon, later, after graduation.
Another important thing: Lidija disliked Emma as much as I did. “Can I tell you
something? Your sister’s a bitch”, she said when she and Emma had bumped into each other
for the first time, outside the bathroom at my house. And that, I think, was what bound me to
her forever.
*
Lidija and me. Not “Lisa” and “Linda” or “Maria” and “Annika”. Where do newspapers get
all those insipid names? What if Lidija had read all that stuff, seen herself turned into a Lisa.
And what if she had seen that thing about “immigrant extraction” and “troubled home life”.
She would have been devastated. Actually, she’d probably have gone straight up to those
reporters and caused a big damn scene.
Speaking of devastated, now that Lidija’s no longer around, I’ve realised that’s
probably the thing I miss most about her: her temperament, that she’d cause a scene and talk
back. That’s never been my forte. It’s not true that I was the “inexperienced”, as the papers
5
had it. I was just kind of a wimp, less good at putting my foot down. Sometimes I ask myself
if it would have made a difference if I’d been better at it. Would things have been different
now? Maybe. Or actually, no. I still tend to think this could have happened to anyone.
Could it have happened anywhere? That’s what they claimed. “This could have
happened absolutely anywhere!”, an agitated woman cautioned in a TV debate. Some local
politician dressed like a car salesman objected: “I think that’s going too far. In Upplands-Bro
we have, among other things, developed a strategy -”
I didn’t like him. What he said made me feel small, as though we were the wretched
children of Aspudden, our doom practically preordained. That’s not how it was. Just look at
Emma, nothing ever happened to her even though she had barely ever left Aspudden, just like
me. And still, I think that man was right. Aspudden isn’t like other places. If you’re born in
Aspudden, you stay in Aspudden. Oh, Aspudden! Once upon a time, there was nowhere else
I’d rather be. And part of me will probably always love Aspudden, despite everything.
6
2
Our lives. You’re thinking webcams and prostitution, two sad little teenage whores. But we
weren’t whores. And we weren’t teenagers either. All of this was just something that
happened; you’ll see. For a long time, Lidija and I lived ordinary lives and had nothing to do
with any of that. Idle lives, that part of the description of our existence was accurate, but they
were wrong to say we didn’t do anything. This might come as a surprise to those of you who
have always had a job to go to, but unemployed people do get up to things. Our lives may
have lacked direction, but never routines. As a matter of fact, my life was more structured
and ordered then than ever before or since. And now I’ll tell you about what my habits were
like in those days:
I usually woke up around eight, always at the same time and always in my own bed.
Why so early, you might be asking, given that grumpy managers and punch cards and all the
other things people have to adjust to formed no part of my world? The simple answer is that
in spite of my fairly indolent nature, I’ve always been a morning person. I wake up early no
matter when I go to bed, and regardless of how much alcohol I drank the night before. So, at
eight I would open my eyes and listen to hear if anyone was home. That was rarely the case;
Emma never spent much time in the flat and mum never missed a day of work at the hospital
every day (she didn’t even take proper time off when she was being treated for breast cancer).
Occasionally, I did run into Emma when she had a random late start; such encounters
invariably ended in pointless spats about the same tedious issues (had I used her brand name
shampoo? When was I going to move out so she could have my room?).
But, as I said, those mornings were the exception. Mostly I was alone, just me and my
Spartan room, which I’d study for a few minutes before considering myself fully awake and
getting up. I usually spent some time in front of the computer and then watched my mini-TV
for an hour, mostly the morning shows or sports – the sports thing was mainly a hangover
from the years with dad and became less and less frequent over time. I also spent less and less
time on my looks – by this time I usually just poked around the jumble of clothes at the
bottom of my wardrobe, fished out a pair of jeans and one of my many hoodies. Once I was
dressed, I made one or two little raids out into the flat, washed my face in the bathroom, went
into the kitchen for a look in the fridge before returning to my room carrying stacks of loot. I
didn’t like lingering out in the flat – it was, like all flats in Aspudden, gloomy and depressing
somehow.
That’s what it looked like, what I like to think of as the first half of my day. It wasn’t
very long but always felt interminable. I repeated my routines once, twice, several times,
starting to feel restless. And that’s when, at some point during the late afternoon, Lidija
would turn up. She’d stand under the balcony and holler various obscenities, most of them
variations on the themes “bitch” and “whore”: “Lollo, you little bitch, get out here!”, “Hey
slut, where are you?” It was the highlight of my day. It was as though something was
released, a pressure, a kind of dejection, and I would scramble to get my stuff together, keys
and phone and money, before racing down the four flights of stairs and out the door. And
that’s when the second half of my day began.
The second half, that was the one they tried to describe with phrases like “binge
drinking by the water in Vinterviken” and “infamous youth gang”. You could just picture it,
couldn’t you? Boozing, blowjobs in the bushes, fights and vomit? Do the papers always do
7
that? Drag everything through the dirt until it’s paltry and filthy, in their eagerness to write
uncomplicated stories? There was no binge drinking. Nor was there a youth gang, not in
Vinterviken and not in that sense. Out there, there was no one except Lidija and me, always
just Lidija and me.
Vinterviken, that still, blue bay of ours, Vinterviken, on which the afternoon sun glues
its long, glittering ribbons of light, turning them into incandescent boulevards that seem to
lead straight into eternity. We flitted out there, carrying our jackets and supplies, which I
always carried in a supermarket bag that bounced against my legs like an overloaded school
bag. Were we going to get up to something fun that day? Something we’d never done before?
Even though I always knew what we’d get up to (nothing special) and where we were going
(to our usual spot), this was a moment filled with more promise than I think I can properly
get across to you. “Today”, Lidija would say, “I want to do everything”. And for a brief
moment, it felt just like that; everything was possible and anything could happen.
Halfway through Vinterviken Gardens we’d start discussing our choice of
destinations. Where should we go? Out to Rocky Point or down to Glass Pond? More often
than not, we ended up out on the promontory, Rocky Point, because of its views across the
bay. We’d usually sit there for a while, listening to the waves breaking against the slick rocks
and the wind sifting through the trees until light and sound blended into one big lovely
murmur that flowed right through us. At that point, I’d take a deep breath, let my shoulders
and arms relax and look at Lidija. It was like a ritual. “Can you feel it?” she’d ask. “Mm”, I’d
reply.
Yes, we did drink. I’ll even go as far as to say we drank quite a bit. But we didn’t
binge. There was nothing juvenile about the way Lidija and I consumed alcohol. No
alcopops, no vomiting. That’s because one morning when I was hungover as usual, Lidija had
felt the need to teach me how to drink over the phone: “You can’t just knock it back like
that”, she said, “that’s completely pointless”. At this point, I interjected something about not
feeling old enough just yet to sip, to which she replied, as she had done so many times before,
that she was an excellent role model: “Watch me next time, you’ll see. I drink, then I pause.
Drink and pause, it’s how it’s done.”
Stop-and-go was the true rhythm of any successful inebriation. That way, she
explained, you get drunk, but you also give your body a chance to keep up. There was
something in her tone of voice, specific but not overly urgent, like a retired professor’s, that
persuaded me, who almost never took advice, to listen. I still remember the afternoon when I
first experienced all the phases of intoxication; when I could point to the exact moment when
one passed into the next, warmth into euphoria, euphoria into intoxication. “I want to be
hammered all the time”, I said. “Me too”, Lidija replied. And from then on, we structured our
lives around drinking.
What does that kind of life look like? More than anything, it’s slow. More or less all
my memories from back then replay in slow motion: limbs moving languidly, almost
weightlessly, circuitous talks, thoughts and threads that were picked up but then floated away
like evanescent soap bubbles. The first few mouthfuls were the best, obviously, before real
drunkenness had had time to hit. You know when your calf muscles start to relax and your
hairline kind of prickles in the sudden heat? I loved that moment and we made it last,
sometimes for a couple of hours. That was when we talked, intensely and endlessly. When we
were sober, Lidija and I had difficulty connecting; when we were drunk we melded like the
childhood friends we weren’t. We talked about Aspudden and Vinterviken, about Emma and
Ana and about how everyone was retarded. We also discussed the big questions, whether life
was worth living or not, and sometimes we talked about death. I’ve always been afraid of
death, but Lidija wasn’t and maybe because we both knew this difference effectively summed
up all the things we didn’t have in common, everything that set us apart from one another, we
8
often stubbornly tried to meet on that particular subject, always with the same old arguments
(“But then it just all goes black?”, “Yes, finally”.).
Somewhere around this point, we’d lean back, in equal measure exhausted and
pleased with our day so far. Sometimes, we’d dose off, only to wake up half an hour later,
disoriented and leaden. By then, none of the things we tried to say to each other got through
and what little did was drowned out by the screeching of mallards and seagulls that had
spotted the edible debris strewn in an uneven circle around us. We were overcome with a
delicious pointlessness, which we wallowed in for a while. I let my chronically restless legs
kick at leaves and roots, maybe dig a little hollow in the ground. Lidija sang to herself. I
cursed at Emma (“I wish she didn’t exist!”), Lidija cursed at everything and anything (I wish
all these birds would just fuck off”), and finally she’d propose a toast with her endlessly
reiterated fanfare: “Everyone can just fuck off!”
I should probably mention that we did other things too, obviously. Like take evening
walks; we often haunted the dark hazel and horse chestnut groves that line Vinterviken, like
two ageing ghosts. And at some point every day, we ambled into Aspudden town centre to
replenish our constantly diminishing stores of cigarettes, snacks and sweets. But that wasn’t
the most important part. The most important part was this: Lidija, Aspudden and me. I’m not
saying that necessarily sounds like much, it quite obviously isn’t, after all. But I have never
experienced anything more special than the years I had with Lidija. I’m completely sincere
when I say I never had a bad day with her. In hindsight, I can’t even rank them; with Lidija,
in Aspudden, with beer or a bottle of Stoli, every day was amazing, each in its own way.
Even the rainy ones, no, especially the rainy ones, when we huddled under Lidija’s raincoat
while she did what she could to keep her cigarette from going out.
Why is that, I asked myself when I drafted this story. How was it I found such
extraordinary pleasure in that aimless existence? Now I know the answer: because it did
something to me, because it set me in motion. “We’re falling”, Lidija used to say when we
reached the point of linking arms, staggering, falling over and getting back on our feet, god
knows how. “Can you feel it?”
Yes, we were falling. We slowly drifted out, over the edge…
*
It was the last week of August. People were already withdrawing indoors. The streets were
abandoned, the only sound the carefree rattling of wind spinners. We were both twenty. My
hair was greasy, Lidija’s newly dyed a strange shade of purple she called “šljiva”. We
exchanged a look and set off down the big hill and into Vinterviken Gardens. Once upon a
time, I’d been able to run, but not anymore; Lidija had never mastered that particular skill and
so we hobbled along like two old dogs, falling, lumbering back up and falling down again.
We laughed at our incompetence the way we laughed at everything: raucously and out of
sync. We felt like we no longer knew how to do anything, and there was a peculiar sort of
thrill in relishing our own degeneration.
That day, we were heading toward Glass Pond, located in Aspudden’s most iridescent
clearing. Our school organised annual excursions there, and the pond was a recurrent motif at
every exhibit of local artists’ cheerful water colours. The foremost reason for Glass Pond’s
special status as monument and memorial was that it had once served as a skating rink and
minor amusement centre for the local populace. Mum, born and raised in Aspudden, often
reminisced about that golden era, longingly nattering on about egg sandwiches and camp fire
hot dogs and hand-knitted hat – scenes I imagined like something straight out of some oldtimey children’s programme: shouts and laughter, lovely, bright 1950s colours. “Back then
people did things together!”, as she always put it.
9
But all that was in the past; insuppressible vegetation had since enveloped the pond. It
was wild enough that many people may, I think, have been unaware of its existence. In order
to find it now, you had to know exactly when to turn off from the main path, walk a thirty
yards or so across stones and slippery planks of wood spanning bog saxifrage and woolly
feather moss, before you’d finally catch sight of the pond, suddenly and without warning,
beyond a stand of dark fir trees. The pond’s composition was strict and architectural; two
low, pastoral wooden benches lining it lengthwise, paved paths and slender birch trees.
Everything in a distinctive colour palette, faded and dim like an old photograph.
We were almost there now. The planks yielded under our feet; we jumped and landed
in the uneven grass. Lidija tore off her jacket and threw herself on one of the benches. “God,
I’m sweating to death”, she panted. “Isn’t it just boiling outside today?”
It really was unusually warm. The sun was still high in the sky and the light fell
straight down into the pond, illuminating it like a glittering treasure. A mild breeze rustled
through the trees; somewhere, a bird was calling. If not for trees that were turning yellow,
this could have been any old summer’s day. But there was something about the mild weather
and the bird song; the view didn’t have its usual calming effect on me. Quite the opposite; it
seemed like an omen, a gentle hint that something was about to happen whether we wanted to
or not. And each time the chaffinch started up again, the message became clearer somehow:
this was a way of life that was coming to an end. I knew it, Lidija knew it and that
understanding manifested as tension and anxiety, which coloured everything we did. We
didn’t want to talk about it, but we spent a lot of time talking around it: “Should we maybe
find something else to do soon? Something other than just drinking? And now here we were,
both aware that this was the day when we would approach the subject head on.
Lidija’s fingers drummed nervously against the bench, her eyes searching for mine.
“Lollo”, she said. She pronounced it Low-low and even though she started practically every
sentence with my name, it always took me a fraction of a second to realise she was talking to
me.
I looked up. “Yes?”
“I’ve been thinking about something. About us, actually. And this. How long do you
think we can keep this up?”
Coward that I am, I pretended not to know what she meant. “Keep what up?” I
mumbled and rubbed my trainers on the grass.
“I mean keep this up. Look at us. We don’t do anything. At least nothing real. And we
drink too much. We can’t keep this up for ever.” She lowered her voice. “Right?”
I paused before replying. “Don’t know”, I said. “How should I know?”
But Lidija was determined. There would be answers today, a plan for the future. “But
what do you think?” she said. “A year? Two? Maybe two?”
“Maybe.”
“And then what?”
“Well…” My voice was flat. “Then we’ll probably get jobs like everyone else.”
I thought she’d accept this gloomy prediction with equanimity, just shrug and reach
for another drink as usual. But she didn’t. Instead she looked almost offended.
“Fuck that”, she exclaimed. She picked up a rock from the ground and squeezed it.
“Not a chance. I’m not working again. Ever.”
“And when we’re thirty”, I said, trying to sound sensible. “How swell do you really
think it’d be to still be sitting here?”
“When I’m thirty”, she said, “I’m going to be a pop star.”
Which sounds more deranged than it was. Lidija actually had a background as a
violist at a conservatory in Belgrade, but it had been so long since she picked up her viola
that it seemed, to her parents’ immense disappointment, highly unlikely she ever would
10
again. She’d mentioned the possibility of retraining to become a pop musician before, but
never seriously.
“A pop star”, she said once more, ”that’s what I’ll be.” She hurled the rock into the
pond where it vanished among the dead leaves without a sound. “And you’re going to be an
author.”
I jumped. Had I ever mentioned my old dreams of being an author to Lidija? Clearly I
must have.
“Come off it”, I told her, breaking into an embarrassed grin. “Where did you even get
that? I’m so not.”
But Lidija persisted: “Yes”, she said. “Of course you are. That’s just how it is.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. These days, almost everything we said to each other
was a joke and the merest suggestion of seriousness instantly had me in a panic. Write? I
couldn’t even remember when I last put pen to paper.
A patch of ragged cloud drifted into view. The clearing went out like a light, as
though someone had flipped a switch. Glass Pond faded into cold monochrome; the grass
under my feet suddenly looked dry and dead. It’s funny how light affects you; suddenly, I had
a distinct tummy ache. Life had become so strange, I thought, so complicated and difficult.
How were you suppose to find your way? How did everyone else do it? It was as if everyone
else had a manual no one had thought to give us.
A glowing break in the clouds slowly widened and the pond soon exploded under a
golden rain of light once more. Bird song, the buzzing of a bumblebee somewhere out of
sight. The knot in my stomach vanished, dissolved, as though it had never been there. I
suddenly felt inexplicably and childishly happy. I looked at Lidija and felt like grabbing her,
telling her that everything was going to be okay, as long as we had each other everything was
possible, a pop career, success, everything… But I didn’t – because I simply don’t have that
kind of grand gesture in me.
“I guess we’ll see”, I said, “about everything.”
She stared into space, deep in thought. A breeze lifted a strand of her hair from her
shoulders and then gently put it back down.
“I don’t’ care what you think”, she said. It was barely more than a whisper. “We’re
going to be famous. I just know it.”
But I could tell, from her nervously shifting eyes, from her fingers, still drumming on
the bench, that she knew it wouldn’t turn out that way. It definitely wouldn’t turn out that
way.
*
That evening, Emma, mum and I had one of our increasingly rare communal dinners.
Mum was in a good mood, prattling on about some patient called Irene who’d
apparently been so grateful for mum’s efforts before and after her hip surgery that she’d
bought mum both flowers and a teddy bear. We were clearing the table when mum started
waving the pink thing around:
“Wasn’t that sweet of her? You should have seen her; she was so pleased. Said she’d
never been so well looked after.” She propped the bear up against the candle stick at the end
of the table. “I thought we might put it here. What do you think? It’s good there, right?”
Emma hid behind a magazine. As per usual, we had barely said a word to each other
during dinner, only exchanged a number of hostile looks. A sizable chunk of fried cod still sat
on her plate. Emma was on a diet, or, as she put it, “watching her figure”. She had been for as
long as anyone could remember.
“Do you want me to take this or what?”, I said.
11
She gave a barely perceptible nod.
“Yes? No?”
A barely audible “yes” made it past her lips, followed by a tiny, sarcastic “thanks”
from me.
Emma and I loathed each other and always had done. Mum used to say it would pass
when we got older, but it hadn’t. I disliked her more than she disliked me. I don’t think there
was anyone I felt less about back then than her. Emma was thoroughly empty. She wasn’t
dumb, in fact she was intelligent, deep down inside, but that was a side of herself she’d
buried long ago in order to perfect her twisted, ice cold bimbo persona. At school she did
cheerleading and drama and whatever else, all of which served only one purpose: to get her
more attention. She mistreated her friends, behaving like a princess among her subjects. She
was spoiled too, always begging mum for money for a never-ending list of moronic things,
some expensive jacket or the other, expensive hair products – the little pest was obsessed
with her ridiculous hair. I was the only person she didn’t boss around. Because she didn’t
dare to. Because she knew I could see right through her.
Now she was sitting there, reading her Cosmopolitan with a level of dedication
befitting a novel. A strand of her hair wrapped around her finger, her mouth set in a selfcentred pout.
“Have you been in touch with your dad?”, mum suddenly asked.
I dropped the plates in the sink with a loud clatter. “Don’t tell me you’re back on that,
mum.”
Dad was a frequent and always unwelcome topic of conversation at our house.
“But it’s been so long. It must be at least… well, wasn’t the last time you saw him
before the summer? And it would make him so happy, I know it would.”
I sighed. “You’re wrong”, I told her. “He’s not sitting by the phone waiting for our
call. Because he doesn’t give a shit about us.”
She stopped short, dishcloth in hand. “How can you say that?” she objected. “That’s
not true at all.”
But of course it was. A minor eternity had passed since dad moved away from us and
our relationship had almost immediately withered. Dad didn’t care about us – and we didn’t
care about him. Why we hadn’t sobbed over phone calls that never came like other children
with divorced parents? Maybe because we knew from very early on that dad was useless? At
least I knew. He didn’t understand me. Never even tried to, actually. He’d still, for example,
invariably launch into a monologue about sports, as if I cared at all; ice hockey and tennis,
had I seen that new young Spanish clay-court player? He also insisted on calling me “Louise”
even though there was nothing I hated more than that name. Some relationships simply lack
potential. The one between me and my dad was one of those.
I stared at Emma to make it clear she should feel free to jump in. She slipped down
further behind her magazine. If we had one thing in common, it was our lack of interest in
dad.
“Maybe some other time”, she squeaked from behind the glossy cover.
Mum looked at her. “Girls, I know you’re young and have a lot on your plates. When
I was your age I certainly didn’t think…” She switched to a different, more authoritative tone
of voice: “The point is, he’s your father. He may not live here but we’re a family. In our own
way.”
Mummy, sweet little mummy. In her world, dad had never really left us. It was like
with her cancer; it was nothing worth mentioning and had barely happened (and consequently
there was no need to quit smoking). Mummy, sweet little mummy. No one did denial like her.
Now you’re imagining a stoic, tormented woman. But there was nothing tormented about her.
Maybe because she was so much better than most people at living in denial? She denied and
12
denied until she believed it herself. Mum was a happy denier. An outsider would have
remarked that there was something melancholic about her, kind of like an old bloodhound,
but no one could have claimed she seemed unhappy. She went to work every day, came home
around six, and on the days when we were definitely having dinner together, she’d fry
something, usually fish or pancakes. But as I said, that happened less and less often. Since
Nan died, she had just one hobby: sitting on the balcony with a Marlboro Menthol, gazing out
across Aspudden. Sometimes she brought a woman’s magazine or a cross word supplement;
those were days of jubilee; on those days she’d sit out there with her magazine and it was
difficult to get through to her. That was her life. And she was fine with it. Don’t ask me how,
but she was.
“Can’t you at least call him?” She had put the cloth down on the table, her eyes
moving between the two of us. “For me?”
13
3
“I have to tell you something”, Lidija said the next day as we trudged along the outer edge of
Årsta Field with mouths full of chocolate.
That afternoon’s activities had consisted of a couple of hours by Glass Pond and a
short walk that Lidija had called off early with reference to a cold she claimed made her feel
“completely fucking out of it”. We were on our way back to the town centre through a
landscape that intoxicated and anesthetised me as effectively as the lager we’d just drunk.
The sky was a luminous blue; the air was full of smells and sounds: the whirr of insects and
grasshoppers, the sharp, sweet fragrance of the white lupins. And I’m not sure if it was the
weather or the fact that we’d barely had anything to eat all day, but I could feel the
beginnings of a headache somewhere behind my right eyebrow. I rubbed my temples, gave a
big yawn.
“Let’s hear it then”, I said.
“Well”, she began, with an infantile grimace that could only mean she was gearing up
for another nonsense subject, “I have a new favourite position”.
It might be best to pause here to expand on the role sex, or I should say pornography,
played in our lives at that time.
We had accidentally discovered it was an interest we shared. “So you watch online
porn”, Lidija had exclaimed when on one of the few nights we spent at my house she had sat
on my bedroom floor with my laptop on her lap and the URL history had coughed up a
considerable list of xxx addresses. With anyone else, I would have lunged at her and snatched
my computer away. But not this time. I don’t know why; I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Instead, I stayed in front of my mini-TV, watching as Lidija browsed through the links, her
mouth wide open with curiosity. After what must have been two or three minutes, set to the
sound of Lidija’s amused “oh”, “haha”, “oh my god!” (which made it feel at least ten times
longer), she closed the laptop, shot me a big grin and said : “Why didn’t you tell me? I love
porn too.”
I answered truthfully that I’d been too scared to, that I’d thought about it once or
twice but refrained because I could just picture her suddenly pinged face blurting out
something like: “But why are you telling me this?”. And she was suddenly very
understanding, nodding eagerly and validating my caginess with a bunch of statements about
girls not generally being into pornography, about barely anyone being into it in fact. “But”,
she said, “we are because we’re not like other girls”.
This assertion really resonated with me. Not like other girls. It sounded so good, so
true. Had I ever been like other girls? Was my whole life not actually a perfect example of
how not to be like other girls? For instance, I nourished no hope, none whatsoever, that a man
would ever make me happy. Nor was I planning some ambitious little career like girls who
think they’re not like other girls tend to. I believed in nothing, because I saw the world for
what it was: a cold, desolate place where emptiness and loneliness reigned.
I came up with that last part then and there and it sounded good to me. Hard and good,
a potential life philosophy even. And it sounded even better when Lidija more or less exactly
repeated my train of thought in a long, emotional tirade on the subject of what life is really
about (pain, loneliness) and how futile it is to try to fight it. “And still everyone does, all the
time”, she sighed. “Girls do all the time.” She made it sound like she was closing in on the
14
answer to a serious existential question. “But we don’t. We watch porn and don’t give a
damn.” Having got that far, and pleased with her ingenuity, she allowed the solemn mood to
dissolve into a deep, throaty chuckle, kind of like a charismatic cartoon villain.
I laughed too. But on the inside a bigger, more ecstatic smile was spreading through
me: We were not like the others. That was the reason we were having trouble finding our way
in this world.
If I had to name one defining moment when Lidija’s and my relationship deepened, I
think I’d say that was it. Not like other girls! Those words were so liberating; our situation
instantly seemed so much more complex. And at the centre of it, somehow, was online porn,
a moderately dirty little secret only we were in on. Evelina, she never understood any of this.
The one time I’d let slip that I’d accidentally stumbled onto a porn site, she’d interrupted me
to tell me I was being weird. Lidija never said I was weird. And the porn in particular she
didn’t find weird at all. We talked about porn like we talked about everything else.
Sometimes when were on our computers at home, we exchanged files and links we’d found.
“Must see!”, “At viewer’s own risk!” and “Something for you?” we tagged them depending
on whether what we’d unearthed was of outstanding quality, shocking or something we
assumed the other might enjoy. Lidija and I had different preferences. She liked big boobs,
big cocks, big everything. I for my part always preferred group sex, lots of women and lots of
men. I liked when everything was writhing, moving: bodies, hands, mouths. I don’t know
why. And I don’t know why I watched such a lot of porn. I’d always watched porn. I mean,
as long as I can remember, porn’s been there, in one way or the other.
“So, my new favourite position is this one”, Lidija was saying. “The girl is standing.
And he enters her from behind. But not against a wall or something; they have to be really
standing up. Just on their own!”.
I grinned at her.
“It’s so sexy. It’s sex.”
That’s how we talked about sex: some things were sex, others weren’t. Things that
were sex: penetration, orgasms, a pair of warm hands with a perfect hold on our hips. Things
that were not sex: the dreary exercises guys in general subjected us to, sloppy, unengaged
kisses, bad breath and the unrelenting pressure to go down on them. Our combined
experiences of mediocre shags were fairly numerous and they were traumas we loved to
retell, invariably embellished with new awkward details. Having once subjected ourselves to
high school relationships like everyone else, the resulting low quality sex was one of the
contributing causes to our eventual lack of interest in guys. Lidija still held out hope. When
some pale, sufficiently good-looking guy caught her eye at one of the house parties we
sometimes ended up at, she could light up momentarily and march straight over. But those
encounters rarely went beyond the opening repartee, since very few people lived up to
Lidija’s complicated criteria for what makes a person attractive, and those who did rarely
understood what she was about.
I was so uninterested in interacting with anyone but Lidija at that point, I was
increasingly confused about my own sexual orientation. Not that I felt any kind of lesbian
urges, for Lidija or any girl for that matter – I was just alarmingly uninterested in men.
“When I watch porn now I just get annoyed. You know? Like, don’t just lie there, get
up for god’s sake!”
I handed her the bag of sweets. I hadn’t watched any porn at all for a few days and felt
a bit indifferent to the subject. But Lidija carried on. Eventually she exploded in a short
laugh:
“Oh my god. If Ana could hear me know she’d kill me.”
Ana was Lidija’s aunt. Three years previous, when Lidija’s Nan had been taken
seriously ill, her parents had gone back to Belgrade. It had in no way been meant as a
15
permanent solution, but her Nan hadn’t really recovered, so both her parents had decided to
stay. Since Lidija obviously didn’t have the means to live by herself, she’d been forced to
move in with Ana. It was a situation she described as a virtual Cinderella situation, with Ana
bossing her around, forcing her to clean all the time without so much as a thank you in return.
But in practice, she actually seemed to like it okay and the few times I’d swung by their
house, I’d found them sitting on the balcony, loud and giggly like sisters.
“Ana doesn’t get any of this, she doesn’t get sex.”
“Everyone gets sex, Lidija. Even the most –“
“No, not Ana. She’s a fucking kaluđerica.”
Calling people rude names was a source of endless delight for Lidija. Like “bitch” and
“whore”, “kaluđerica” – which means something like “frigid old spinster” in Serbian, was a
frequently used item of her vocabulary. Boring women were frigid; we could be too, on our
bad days, and Ana definitely was.
We followed the edge of the field. The sun’s deep orange disc vibrated above us, the
milletgrass swayed. The enormous radio tower rose in the distance like an ancient monolith. I
wouldn’t have called that place beautiful, but I liked it; it was a natural part of me, in the
same way my room was. I had tramped around here so many times, caught frogs in baby food
jars, whacked at the grass with sticks while apathetically waiting for something, anything, to
happen.
I stopped, squinting. On the other side, other parts of the city began, bridges and
Stockholm proper. Since we never went into the centre, it sometimes grew disproportionately
large in my mind. I imagined flashing bill boards, taxis and sharp-edged shopping bags that
somehow always managed to hit you in the face. It was a vision that seemed scary and
tempting at the same time.
“What if we just walk straight across here and see where we end up?”, Lidija
exclaimed. She skipped a few steps into the field. “Come on!”
Leaps and semi-pirouettes – the movements in combination with Lidija’s generally
poor control of her lanky limbs made her look like a wounded bird and I couldn’t help
laughing at her. But I was in no mood to play around. The sun was scorching. I was properly
tired now and my headache pounded louder with every passing minute.
“I can’t be bothered”, I said. “I don’t feel well. And aren’t you supposed to be ill –“
“I’m fine!” Lidija jumped again. “Ajde!” Her Serbian tended to come out when she
was agitated: “Ajde! Ajde! It’ll be a riot!”
“I guess”, I said. I really was incredibly tired. “But not today.”
*
Back in the town centre, we ended up at the bowling lanes.
Aspudden Bowling, yet another local curio. We don’t have any clothing stores or fast
food chains – but there is a bowling alley. The owner, a diminutive Italian gentleman by the
name of Guido, bought the place in the sixties and has tenderly looked after it ever since. It
was an old-fashioned place and very cosy: pictures on the walls, plush sofas. In addition to
the lanes there was a café – the actual money-spinner – with high bar tables covered with red
and white chequered table cloths, around which most visitors clustered.
That’s where we were sitting, shovelling pizza into our contentedly smiling mouths.
We were rarely as happy as when we’d come by some food.
“I love this place”, Lidija declared, “I could live here.”
“Have fast food every day”, I said around a mouthful of pizza. “Sure, that sounds
alright.”
16
She looked around. “Check it out, there he is.” She’d spotted Guido, who was
mopping the floor in a remote corner of the room. Through drunken giggling, she managed to
squeeze out: “What do you say? Should we ask him? Maybe if we fuck him he’d let us move
in?”
And then we both laughed.
Down by the lanes, a lone guy in a baseball cap was practising his rolls. He psyched
himself up each time and seemed disappointed every time he went to fetch his ball. Alex and
Nicole were sitting at a table by the back wall. I might have been imagining it, but I felt like I
was seeing them around more and more. He was a couple of years older than us and
something of a quasi-celebrity in Aspudden, partly because he was so fit, partly because he
used to be into illegal stuff. Stolen cars, a minor narcotics charge, frequent fights. For
instance, one time, one of Evelina’s cousins had come across him in a foot tunnel in the
middle of the day and been beaten up for no good reason. That’s what Alex was like. But
he’d calmed down a lot recently.
I didn’t know much about Nicole, other than that she featured on the periphery of
Emma’s group of friends and looked like the rest of them, if slightly more manky: her
mascara clumped, there were dark roots in her blonde mane and the obligatory cropped jacket
with that ridiculous fur collar all teenage skanks insisted on wearing was not only cheap but
streaked with dirt. Without really knowing anything about her, I felt sorry for her. She always
looked so down and tired, as though she hadn’t slept for a week.
“Who’s that girl?” Lidija said in a tone that made the question sound like an
accusation.
Lidija was instinctively hostile to blonde girls. She claimed they were all snobs who
thought themselves above everyone. All blondes except me, of course: “You’re a dishwater
blonde, that’s not the same thing”, she’d explained when the subject came up – one of many
exceptions Lidija made for me.
“Her name’s Nicole I think. I don’t know her.”
“Are they an item or what?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You sure?”
I was. I had no idea what Nicole’s link with Alex was, but my guess would have been
blood; they might possibly be half-siblings or step-siblings. They didn’t act like a couple
anyway. No hugs or anything. In fact, he behaved more like she was his daughter, ordering
for her, patting her paternally on the head.
I looked in their direction. Nicole had built a little pyramid of balled up napkins on
her empty plate. Alex said something to her which made her burst out laughing, sending the
napkin balls fly every which way. She seemed in a good mood for once and I was happy for
her.
“Never mind them”, I said.
Lidija pouted – she hated being told off. “Alright, fine”, she said. “Hey, I need a
smoke. Coming with?”
I shook my head. I was still feeling sluggish and forced a little yawn to illustrate my
crippled state.
*
“Lollo, look who I found!”, Lidija squealed behind me five minutes later. She had brought
Robin, or Robin Z as he’d been known since preschool, since back then, at least a third of all
baby boys in Aspudden were given the name “Robin”. He was an old boyfriend of Lidija’s,
the only one she was still on speaking terms with.
17
We said a brief hello – Robin and I don’t really have anything in common aside from
Lidija, but he was alright and I liked him fine. I pulled out a chair and he lowered his bony
frame onto it. Robin was tall – and he was blond as well. Lidija’s sceptical attitude to blond
people didn’t extend to men, not at all – in fact, she was particularly partial to blond men and
since her breakup with Robin, all her boyfriends had exhibited similarly strawberry blond
mops.
“So what are you up to these days?” he inquired, polite as a bellhop.
Lidija glanced at me. That question always caused us some consternation. “The usual,
I guess”, she said and tried to look like she wasn’t bothered in the slightest about the fact that
we were still drifting. “And you? Don’t tell me you got a job?”
“I did, actually.” A faint smile curled his lips. “I put in floors.”
“What? You’re kidding? You’re one of them now?”
“I guess so.”
“Fuck you”, she hissed, only partly joking.
But Lidija wasn’t looking for a fight and she soon expertly steered the conversation
toward other topics. Gossip about old teachers and classmates, the skiing holiday Robin had
made Lidija go on a few years ago, which had ended in a concussion and a broken collarbone
(Robin) and a major bender in the hotel bar in the middle of the day (Lidija). She seemed
delighted with Robin’s presence, strewing smiles and laughter all round, and saying how we
never met up anymore and that we should get together more often.
And then she wanted to know if Robin had a new girlfriend. There was still a bond
between Lidija and Robin, but it only applied, at least as far as she was concerned, as long as
he remained single.
“So no girls?”
“No girls”, Robin assured her for the third time.
“Not even some little skank you fuck sometimes?”
He shot her crooked smile. “No, there’s no –“
Someone called Robin’s name. It was the guy by the lanes.
“It’s Kris”, he sighed. “I promised him a couple of games.”
“Kris?” Lidia said. “Don’t tell me you know that dork?”
“We were in the same class. He’s the one who threatened to throw his sandwich at
you by the lockers when you called him a loser. Remember?”
She shook her head, demonstrably uninterested. “I do my best to instantly forget
dorks.”
Robin smiled at her affectionately. This was probably why Lidija preferred our
company, because we gave her free reign, let her act out all her rudeness and offensiveness
without getting upset. Even better, we liked her for it. Which wasn’t all that strange: Robin
and I were two apathetic peas in pod – Lidija’s rowdy ways only barely compensated for that.
“Isn’t he actually quite cute?” Lidija sighed when Robin had reached the lanes and
was lazily poking around the colourful balls.
“Sure”, I said. “I guess.”
But Robin wasn’t my type. If you could even say I still had a type.
I sucked on my last piece of crust. Down by the lanes, Robin was getting ready. Lidija
stood up and wolf-whistled: “Come on! Stick it to that dork!”
Then she sat back down, turned to me and said:
“I just have to fuck Robin again.”
18
4
In October, summer finally relinquished its hold on Aspudden, giving way to a time of
dazzling autumn spectacles: deep violet storm clouds rolling across a black sky, the sporadic
sound of dogs barking in the distance. Out by the allotments, people lit garden lanterns and
these days the more ambitious of them had taken to displaying those carved pumpkin heads
as well. I liked the pumpkins and their wicked grins; like a child, I sensed they were full of
promise, parties and adventure, new, secret hijinks laced with delicious horror. Lidija loved
everything about the season: the special drama it provided, which she claimed had no Serbian
equivalent; the darkness she always said was her true element.
But most of all, she relished dressing for that time of year, pulling on her tall boots
and wrapping herself in her favourite piece of clothing, a shimmering black mink coat her
parents had given her for her eighteenth birthday. The underlying concept Lidija tried to
achieve in all her sartorial efforts was glamour, a theme she constantly improved on by any
means she could think of. That particular autumn, she painted her nails scarlet and adorned
her earlobes with heavy, imitation crystal earrings and her thin wrists with gold bangles.
When she made an effort, Lidija cut a genuinely regal figure.
“We look so damn hot”, she’d say when we greeted each other outside the front door
of my building in our autumn get-ups. It wasn’t true of course. Lidija was the beautiful one,
although hers was a beauty that maybe rubbed off on me just a little. But her saying so still
made me happy and tempted me into believing we actually emitted some form of
sophisticated radiance as we strode through Aspudden. At that time of year, it certainly felt
like we did.
”As long as we look hot everything’ll be alright”, she’d also say, although not as
frequently as she’d used to.
That, on the other hand, had become harder to believe. Things seemed to point in the
opposite direction. Lidija came down with one cold after the other, had a chronically runny
nose and a cough that racked her body ever more violently. We also had less money than
ever; by that time, we only managed to scrounge up wrinkled twenties and piles of loose
change, which we stared at with a growing sense of resignation. Had things become more
expensive? Was beer twice as expensive as a year ago? It felt like it was. And worst of all,
mum had decided to renew her efforts at nagging me into getting a job: “You’re twenty years
old”, she’d exclaimed with new and unsettling emphasis when I got back late one night. Surly
sneers, digs about me “actually being expensive to clothe and feed”. Soon she’d be coming
after me for real again.
But like the crew of the Titanic, Lidija and I ignored all the signs of impending
disaster and kept true with undiminished speed. Back and forth to Vinterviken, booze and
plastic cups, endlessly dwelling on the same old irrelevant topics. I moaned about Emma;
Lidija mostly talked about Robin. Actually, she talked about Robin and their possible reunion
constantly:
“I really want to fuck him. I know that now.”
Dusk was drawing in and we were on our way back to Aspudden and the supermarket,
where the task of the day was shoplifting. We both shoplifted, but Lidija stole more because
she was better at it. She’d steal almost anything when she was thus inclined: magazines,
clothes, jewellery and makeup. “For my beloved”, she’d say and present me with some Max
19
Factor lip balm as though she were my boyfriend. I want to point out that we didn’t always
shoplift; about half the time we did, the other half we didn’t; which approach we chose on
any one day depended entirely on our economic situation. At that point that situation was, as
I’ve explained, strained.
“Because, you know, why not?” she repeated as the doors slid open and the bright,
pleasant warmth of the store enveloped us. Even though it had become her habit over the last
couple of weeks to both start and end her days talking about Robin, having the matter
properly considered again still got her all fired up. “He’s fit, he’s nice…” Her heels clicked
across the stone floor. “Right? Don’t you think so?”
I had nothing to say on the subject. Not that I didn’t like Robin, I just couldn’t quite
see the point of him. What did Lidija need Robin for, I wondered. Really?
“I don’t know”, I said. And then I added, I have no idea why: “Isn’t he a bit too tall?”
She snorted dismissively. “Too tall? You’re too short.”
The comment was classic Lidija. Whenever someone didn’t agree with her she
instantly reached for an insult. She had called me, who was no more than a few centimetres
below average height, too short on a number of occasions.
I laughed, desensitised as I was to Lidija’s outbursts. “Maybe”, I said. “But he’s still
too tall.”
We’d made it to the snacks shelves. I ran my fingers along a row of shiny gold
packaging, pulling out a bag of cheese doodles: “What about these?”
She shook her head.
“These then?”
“Nah.”
Normally, shoplifting filled Lidija with a kind of reckless, youthful energy. Not
because of the loot but because of the thrill. But today she ambled around lazily; today her
entire being was consumed with thoughts of Robin.
“Just tell me you think it’s a bad idea”, she muttered. “I know you think so.”
“Okay”, I said, “I think it’s a bad idea.”
She stopped and glared at me. “But why?”
“Because…” I didn’t know how to go on. Did we really have to do this again?
Apparently we did. “Because the last time you got back together it was a screaming mess”, I
said. “And the time before that, too.”
It was true. We never talked about it anymore, but Lidija’s breakups with Robin had
been drawn-out, melodramatic affairs. Tearful goodbyes, reconciliations within a week.
There were scenes of jealousy, tug-of-wars over time and money. The two of them were, as
inevitably became clear sooner or later, utterly unable to agree on anything. Lidija accused
Robin of being cold and boring. Robin thought Lidija was combative and high-maintenance
(“Am I really so fucking high-maintenance? I’m not, right? Right?”). When Lidija was with
Robin, she came to our meetings drained and more tired than ever. If it were up to me, we’d
never have anything to do with guys ever again. They just took up our time, always
disappointed us and things never ended well.
“But it would be different this time”, she assured me. “This time it would just be sex.”
“What?” I said, “How do you mean?”
“Just sex. That’s it.”
My shoe lace had come undone; I crouched down to tie it. Lidija stared into space.
Suddenly, there was an unmistakably flinty glint in her eye.
“Guess who’s outside”, she said. She pointed a frosty finger at the windows. “There.”
I stood up and looked out. In the distance I spotted a familiar, white-haired head cross
the road. It was Mimmi, Aspudden’s own Mimmi. How to best describe Mimmi? She
bleached her hair platinum blonde, talked baby-talk and was the only threat to our status as
20
Aspudden’s most dependable idlers. She’d moved here on her own from one of the inner
suburbs a couple of years ago and immediately become something of a queen of scandals.
According to herself, she had every psychiatric diagnosis in the book, a fact she more than
happily expounded on to anyone who would listen. People flocked to her, as though
spellbound by her luminous presence and strangely soft voice. Everyone except me and
Lidija.
“Look at her. Who does she think she is?”
Lidija was referring to Mimmi’s look-of-the-day, an over the top outfit that made her
look more like Puss in Boots than anything else: a big, wide-brimmed hat, black lace-up
boots, black gloves.
“I don’t give a shit about Mimmi”, I said. I don’t know how many times I’d uttered
those exact words; I’d never been able to muster the same bitter response to her.
Outside, Mimmi had just sat down on a bench and was lighting a cigarette with a
gorgeously nonchalant gesture. Mimmi made this lifestyle look so easy. Even though she
must surely have been struggling with the same things we did, hunger and never having
enough money, she never let it show. She was always in a fantastic mood and welcomed all
comers. Because of that, all kinds of people were drawn into her orbit: younger girls who
looked up to her and bleached their hair to match her decolourised shade, homeless people
and drunks. One time, for example, she’d dragged this old, mentally ill lady, whom she called
“Miss Dolly”, around with her.
Lidija glared out the window again. “I wonder if Robin could ever fuck Mimmi?” She
pronounced “Mimmi” with the restrained aversion of a person forced to touch a leaking bin
bag. “What do you reckon?”
I sighed. “I have no idea, Lidija. How would I know?”
She pulled a face. “Mimmi wouldn’t think twice. She’d fuck anyone.”
*
That night, just before going to bed, I had a look at Mimmi’s blog. I usually avoided it out of
a sense of loyalty to Lidija, who quite possibly hated Mimmi’s blog more than Mimmi
herself. Not that it was such a big sacrifice; the blog was no different from Emma’s or any
one of the blogs every girl from Aspudden dabbled with back then: endless low-quality
selfies in bathrooms and at parties, cute animals, and banal poems about unrequited love and
suicidal thoughts. “Patetično!” Lidija huffed whenever it came up in conversation, and I was
inclined to agree.
But that night, I ended up reading the blog for quite a while. A clutch of photos
showed a messy after-party and Mimmi, surrounded by a crowd of young people and
obviously wasted, laughing at the camera. In another picture, she was holding a plastic cup
and smiling mischievously at the photographer. Her eyelashes were coated with clumping,
blue mascara; she had an ulcer on her bottom lip. The caption read: “CHEERS!”
I’d seen similar pictures an infinite number of times before and I can’t say they’d ever
made much of an impression on me. But that night, Mimmi’s dishevelled charisma transfixed
me. Who was she? And what was all this in aid of?
*
“I’m not going to bother with a job”, I told Lidija the next day, with unaccustomed resolve,
for me. “I’ve made up my mind. I don’t give a shit; I’d rather be homeless.”
Like so many times before, we were out on Rocky Point.
21
Rocky Point. To passers-by it was just one of those open, ugly places that most
wooded areas peter out into eventually, an unwelcoming spit of land jutting out into the bay,
a barren nothingness. And that’s how it was used. All kinds of rubbish was regularly flytipped out here: bikes and clothes, toys and old VHS tapes. Once, we found a washing
machine propped against a tree, big and out of place, its door wide open. “Maybe we could
sell it”, Lidija mused – but just as we got around to giving her idea some real thought, the
washing machine suddenly vanished. Who it was that went to the effort of lugging all that
stuff out there I don’t know – we never saw anyone, never heard anything, though
waterlogged tyre tracks along the footpaths indicated the presence of both motorcycles and
jeeps. Still, we only ever encountered the usual crowd of stand-up citizens: dog owners and
pensioners, joggers in windbreakers and tights engaging in ridiculous sequences of stretches
before quickly skipping off again, away from this godforsaken place. “I don’t understand
what you get up to out there”, mum would sigh whenever I happened to mention Rocky
Point. “It makes me so sad to think that my little girl…”
That’s because she’d never made it all the way to the furthest point, beyond the last
row of windswept trees and shrubs, where the ground turns into sand and stone and wild
waters. Out there was a park bench, worn smooth by wind and rain; it was to sit on that bench
Lidija and I went out there. The moment you sat down on it everything fell away, tiredness
and boredom, the eczema on my forearms, which for some reason was flaring up with
increasing regularity. Sometimes it doesn’t take much for a person to feel better, just a clear
view of water and waves. I don’t know why, but water in motion eases my mind like nothing
else.
But this wasn’t one of the good days. Lidija had slipped on the thin mat of slimy
leaves that covered the gravel that time of year. There were black slugs everywhere. It was a
dreary, drizzly afternoon, an afternoon that made the thought of more darkness, yet another
winter, almost unbearable.
We hadn’t started drinking yet; I was perched on the edge of the bench; Lidija had
pulled her knees up under her chin and wrapped her fur coat around her like a tent. Her runny
nose had blossomed into a full-on cold and she was speaking to me in this wonderfully
feverish voice. Her breath smelled strongly of something sweet and pungent.
“Propolis”, she said when I asked. “Ana always makes me take it when I’m ill.”
“Does it help?”
She shook her head. “Not even a little.”
The wind rustled through the reeds, a flock of laughing seagulls sailed past high
above us. I handed her a can of lager, which she took in her frail hand.
“But this does”, she said and smiled softly at the beer. The mood between us felt
tenderer than it had in a long time. Sisterly, attentive.
“So what are you saying?” she continued. “You think we should do this for real?
Become proper bag ladies?”
“Yeah, I’d rather that –“
“Imagine that, huh… Two bag ladies; I don’t think I’ve ever seen that. Let’s do it.
We’ll scare the shit out of all the kids!” She let out a weak laugh that seemed to teeter on the
brink of a coughing fit.
“I’m serious”, I said. “I realised it yesterday. We have to carry on like this, for as long
as we can. This is all I want to do.” I took a swig of my beer. “Because I won’t be able to
handle anything else.”
“Me neither.” She looked at me gravely, tentatively. The whites of her eyes had a pink
tint to them, I realised – poor Lidija, she really wasn’t well. “Do you know what the worst
thing about growing up is?” she said. “That we’re going to have to take care of everything.”
“Don’t say that.”
22
“But it’s true.” She raised her left hand and started counting off her fingers. “We’re
going to have to slave for everyone. Kids, guys, parents… -“
“Cut it out.”
“It’s how it’s going to be. It’s how it always is.” She went quiet for a while and then
said: “But no one’s going to fucking take care of us.”
It sounded harsh. But it struck me that it was probably pretty much a foregone
conclusion. Waiting on the other side of this was uninterrupted work and uninterrupted caring
for other people without getting anything in return. Maybe that was what scared us the most?
Giving without receiving? A depressing image loomed up before me: a quartet of horrible
family members to attend on, some man you might at a push be able to nag into putting his
own dirty dishes in the dishwasher, kids who grew up into ungrateful, loveless monsters who
whinged about the lack of soft drinks in the fridge. And this was what you were meant to
slave for for twenty or thirty years, until old age and death took you. The realities of
adulthood suddenly hit me with greater force than I’d ever experienced before. The living
conditions of this world seemed impossibly cruel to me.
A gust of wind snatched at us and Lidija cowered under her coat. There was
something touching about the way she folded up her long limbs as best she could. For a
moment I wanted to take her in my arms and hold her tight.
“What are we going to do?”, I squeaked. “I don’t want to grow up. I just want to be.
Why can’t we just be? Do nothing? I want to do nothing.”
I looked at Lidija and hoped she had some good line ready, something hard and
defiant about her and me against the world. But instead she said:
“I wonder what Robin’s doing now.”
*
Even though I knew she was ill, I was surprised when Lidija called in sick the next day. It
wasn’t the first time, obviously, but because of the situation and our mood just then, we’d
been spending more or less all of our time together.
But there she was, more pitiful than I’d heard her in a long time: “Lollo, I can barely
move…” I heard clattering in the background. “That’s Ana. She’s making me chicken soup
but I don’t think I’ll be able to get it down.”
I was just about to say something when she beat me to it: “Don’t be mad, okay?”
“Come off it.”
Sometimes Lidija apologised too profusely when she couldn’t make it to our
meetings. It made me uncomfortable because I took it as confirmation that she thought I
wasn’t capable of getting by on my own.
And obviously, I was.
“Maybe it’s for the best”, I said finally. “To be honest I don’t exactly feel a hundred
percent either.”
That last part was a lie. I wasn’t feeling ill in the slightest. Quite the opposite, I felt
remarkably full of energy and after we hung up, I decided to actually make these solitary
hours count. Maybe do a lap around Aspudden? Head down to Vinterviken to skip some
stones? From time to time, I envied the spry pensioners we bumped into out there on account
of their almost religiously healthy habits: punctual afternoon walks, a pause for nature
observations by the water’s edge. Today, I was going to take a leaf out of their book, I told
myself; today I was going to surprise myself, Lidija and everyone by doing something
thoroughly healthy. No alcohol and no snacks, just me and my own thoughts.
But when I got outside, I was greeted by the same grim drizzle as before. Persistent
rain always turned the path through Vinterviken into slippery muck and I wasn’t keen on
23
getting my trainers dirty. I meandered through the town centre at a leisurely pace with no clue
where to go. The rain pattered softly against the asphalt. The dripping benches encircling an
overblown rhododendron at the heart of Aspudden glared at me mournfully. There was not a
soul to be seen. Aspudden looked like the backdrop of a film set in the rain, a black, desolate
cityscape intended to evoke a visceral feeling of abandonment. Which it succeeded in doing
that day. Should I head over to the bowling alley? Buy a soft drink and just let the hours
crawl by? I probably would have if I’d had any money on me – but after searching my
pockets repeatedly, I had to conclude I was completely skint.
Without giving my route much thought, I drifted down the high street and turned off
onto a street that ran through one of the darker, less affluent areas. Suddenly, I was in a
cobbled alley I didn’t recognise. A black bin bag lay on the ground, its ugly contents spilling
out across the pavement: a broken polystyrene board, a tennis racket, a pile of wet clothes…
The rain hammered against the plastic. I gingerly stepped onto it. And there I stood, I have no
idea how long, looking round with the same disoriented expression tourists wear in foreign
countries. A woman on a balcony said hi to me. I said hi back, raising a jaunty hand in
greeting, which made me feel like a moron.
Acute confusion overwhelmed me. What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t think of a
single activity that felt even slightly meaningful. I had an epiphany right there and then: I
needed Lidija. Her unspoken concern about leaving me alone was actually well-founded. I
was utterly lost without her.
24
5
The next morning, I snatched up my phone after the first ring.
“Better yet?” I said, in exactly the kind of desperate tone I’d intended to avoid.
“Not yet.”
Lidija sounded different now. Absent and weird.
“Do you want me to come by? I could pick something up –“
“No, don’t.”
“Sure?”
“I’m fine. I just need one more day –“
Not that we were in the habit of going round each other’s houses. But on those rare
occasions when we did, it had often been when one of us was sick. Like one winter, when
Lidija and Ana were prepping for their annual trip to Belgrade to visit family and Lidija came
down with a flu that was just out of this world: non-stop puking, fever spiking around forty
degrees – Ana had offered to stay; Lidija had gently but firmly declined. A day later, she’d
called and almost inaudibly asked me to come over. I’d found her curled up in the foetal
position at the very back of the darkened flat. It was a story we loved retelling on account of
its drama and intimacy: I’d held her hair while her head was in the toilet and she’d taken my
hand, looked me in the eye, and in her characteristically theatrical manner uttered the words:
“Lollo, forgive me, but I think I’m going to die…”
She didn’t, of course. Instead we’d installed ourselves in the tiny, cluttered TV room
(endless photographs and china figurines, a Serbian wall hanging depicting two men hunting
deer), me on the floor, Lidija in an armchair under a mountain of blankets. And we’d stayed
there until she felt better and dragged herself off to the kitchen to dig up a bottle of wine.
We’d clinked glasses until the wee hours, and the next morning she’d declared herself cured.
It was one of the best days of my life and I wouldn’t have minded repeating it.
But Lidija wouldn’t budge.
“I’ll be in touch”, was all she said.
And that was that. I stayed on my bed with the phone in my hand for a long time
afterwards. I’d dreaded this moment since the day before. Another twenty-four hours without
Lidija. How would I manage?
That day, I stayed in. Had chocolate milk for breakfast, and again for lunch. Spent
several hours in front of my computer without doing much. Vainly hoped Lidija would be
online so we could chat – but she wasn’t. The hands of the clock on my wall crept forward
almost imperceptibly. It was two o’clock, then two minutes past. And I had nothing to do; I
really couldn’t think of a single sensible thing to get up to.
That’s when I went to Mimmi’s blog to see if she’d updated it. A large image loaded
slowly. It was Mimmi, pale and drawn in an underground carriage, wearing a typical Mimmi
outfit: a yellow dressing gown so filthy it looked like something from a skip, on her head a
traditional Lucia crown of candles. Her ulcer still hadn’t healed, her eyed were bleary and
stoned. The caption read: “LOVELY PLACE TO SLEEP LAST NIGHT”.
There are days when your mind is so empty, any impression can take root, when
something happens to you and you take a step in a new direction without even realising it.
This was that kind of day. I stared at the screen. It was a perfect picture, encapsulating
everything I felt I could relate to in this world: rebellion and resignation, a kind of deliberate,
25
magnificent chaos. Why was I not Mimmi? I asked myself. Why was I nothing like that?
Why was I so drab?”
I got up from the bed almost robotically. I did a few meaningless laps round the flat,
turning lights on and off again. And then, without really thinking about what I was doing, I
went into Emma’s room. I normally never did that; Emma and I had an unspoken agreement
by which our respective rooms were no-go zones for the other and we never, ever
overstepped those boundaries, not even when the other was actually in there. If we wanted
something, we’d stand in the doorway and communicate from there, without putting so much
as a toe across the threshold.
But that day, I stepped across the holy line of demarcation. I looked around Emma’s
well-polished fortress, in which the colour white was so ubiquitous, it made the room look
like a bathroom. White, she claimed, reflected her “searching personality” (I still remember
when she first delivered that declaration, with the same out-of-touch tone of voice smug pop
stars use after coming back from war-torn countries feeling morally superior). Aside from the
whiteness, there was an immaculate, almost perverted level of order in the room. Not a crease
in the bed throw, the window sill bare apart from one willowy orchid (once upon a time,
Emma’s favourite old stuffed animal, a koala bear, had sat there, but it had been deemed too
dirty, or as Emma so characteristically put it, “so gross”, and thrown out). If it weren’t for the
feminine touch, Emma’s room could have belonged to a serial killer.
Fully aware of the strangeness of my actions, I sat down at the inevitably white
makeup table. Shiny table top, shiny things. There was a concave mirror, brushes and a
nightmarish amount of makeup. I studied myself in the oval mirror. At this point, I’d not
worn makeup for months and my hair hung limply from a centre parting, like a hippie’s.
Sometimes I chose that look because it brought me closer to what I’ve always considered,
should I call it my true nature? I’m talking about things like being laid back and uninhibited,
maybe even independent. But over the past few months, I’d just not had any reason to pay
attention to my appearance and I’d turned into something you’d find at a camp site: shiny
forehead, blotchy cheeks and chapped lips. My reflection made me unhappy. I had to do
something about it. But what?
I opened a powder compact, releasing a big dust cloud. It smelled expensive so I put it
back down. A big shoebox marked “COSTUMES ETC” in black marker sat on a pile of
fashion magazines. I pulled it closer and carefully popped the lid off.
It was like sticking my nose into a rainbow. The box was full of wigs and false
eyelashes, sequins in a hundred different shades. I ran a finger across one of the eyeshadows,
a sharp, rusty shade sprinkled with specks of gold, and smeared it across my eyelids. My eyes
looked bigger now, more solemn. I added other things I came across, eyeliner and lotions.
Mascara? “You should wear mascara”, Lidija had told me once, “it makes all the difference.”
With mounting anticipation, I turned back to face the mirror.
Lidija was right. Mascara made all the difference. Makeup made all the difference.
From now on, I thought, I’d never go without makeup.
*
That evening, Emma appeared in my doorway. I was lying on my bed, watching TV,
pretending not to notice her.
She cleared her throat. There she was, with the ingratiating, doll-like little smile she
only pulled out when she wanted something. She was wearing a pair of low-cut jeans and a
tiny, white, woolly jumper. There was a gap between trousers and top, showing off her
perfectly flat, tanned stomach and her ridiculous belly-button piercing.
“Yes?”
26
“I’ve a question”, she said. “You know who Nicole is, right?”
Nicole. The bowling alley. I undeniably did.
“I think so”, I replied. “Blonde hair, right? Why?”
“Well, as you know, I’m in charge of the school Christmas show.” I detected a certain
weariness in her tone of voice. “And Nicole’s in it this year.”
The Aspudden High School Christmas Show was a hodgepodge of skits performed to
an audience on the last day of term. Since Emma had taken over as show runner in her very
first year at the school, I’d been hearing about it more often than I really cared to.
“Okay?” I said. “And?”
“The thing is, she’s in the big opening scene. She plays an elf.” She paused briefly.
“I’m Santa’s sexy girlfriend, by the way. Anyway, it’s kind of like a brothel, you might say…
it’s kind of hard to explain.”
A brothel with girl elves? Where Emma was the fairest of them all? It needed no
explanation. On the contrary, it was disturbingly easy to picture her in her room, at the start
of term, bursting with smugness as she put together this vacuous bit.
I looked at her with contempt as she prattled on:
“The problem is that she hasn’t turned up for rehearsal for three weeks. And that’s
just not okay. We only rehearse once a week.”
“So call her.”
“We already did. We called her house as well. But her parents told us she moved out
ages ago. They’re alcoholics or something, so we could barely get them to make any sort of
sense.” She heaved a sigh. “It’s majorly weird. No one’s seen her. No one in the whole
school.”
A delinquent youth? That Emma had deigned to call round looking for? That didn’t
sound like the Emma I knew – and it wasn’t:
“Well, I wouldn’t want her there anyway, actually. She doesn’t quite make the cut.
She’s not, you know, like me and Kelly. Put it that way.” She opened her eyes wide and
smiled stiffly – a facial expression meant to signal that her assessment was harsh but fair.
“But the head teacher requires the show runner to let anyone who wants participate. You
know, to, like, encourage them. It’s retarded, but…”
Should I mention the bowling alley? Alex? If I mentioned Alex, Emma would call
him and find Nicole immediately. And this insignificant and reluctant effort on her part
would probably garner her lots of praise: the head would pat her on the back for being so
committed, rumours about her feat would spread through the teachers’ lounge and tip the
scales in her favour in every instance where her grades were borderline. The plan was written
all over Emma’s face and I was expected to just collaborate. This is exactly the kind of thing
Emma would never do for me, I thought. Emma never does anything for me.
“Sorry”, I said. “I really have no idea.”
Her contrived expression was morphing back into the arrogant look I was
considerably more used to. “But if you see her, can you…?”
“Sure. I will.”
She was just about to leave when she stopped: “By the way, there was just one more
thing. You haven’t been in my room, have you?”
I flinched. “What? No, why would I?”
“I don’t know, I just had a feeling.”
“A feeling?” I sneered. “What kind of feeling? Was there a bad smell or something?”
She raised one hand, palm out: “Forget it.”
Emma was an idiot, but she was still my little sister and she was still afraid of me.
“I’ve not been in your room.”
“Okay.”
27
And then she quickly sashayed off.
*
Two more days passed. More chocolate milk, more time spent in front of the computer. The
second night, I surfed porn sites for hours. Bodies thrusting against one another, slap-slap.
Afterwards, I curled up under my duvet, turned the TV on. A news broadcast: in Norrland
there was a wildfire, in Skåne some children had found a century-old skeleton while they
were playing. I fell asleep early, with the TV still on.
*
“Guess what I did”, Lidija said on the phone the next morning.
“What?”
“I think you know.”
“No, what?”
“Lollo, I did it; I fucked Robin.”
*
“You don’t hate me now, do you? Tell me you don’t!”
Lidija let go of her tray with her right hand, brought her arm up and coughed into the
crook of her elbow. She was almost over her cold, the only lingering remnant was this
annoying tickly cough.
We were at McDonald’s, MacDonald’s in Liljeholmen to be precise. Liljeholmen was
the only outing beyond Aspudden we sometimes went on. Not that it involved any real travel;
Liljeholmen was just a few stops on the underground from Aspudden, but since Liljeholmen
was everything Aspudden wasn’t – a shopping and transport hub for people living south of
Stockholm, a hectic, seemingly overpopulated place where new high-rises were constantly
popping up everywhere – the journey there always seemed longer than the few minutes it
actually took to complete it.
Liljeholmen had a three-story mall with lifts of that conspicuous, modern variety
(glass, cylindrical), a ball pit, ice cream bars and the country’s biggest multiplex cinema. I
liked being there, noisily slurping on my straw, people watching. There was something about
all those faces, children and old people, chattering teenagers with no connection to Emma and
her perfumed, delightful group of girlfriends, all those strange and yet so familiar,
commonplace faces. It always cheered me up.
“Fuck”, Lidija exclaimed after dropping her tray too hard as usual, making
considerable amounts of soft drink spill. “Why do I always have to –“
She tossed a napkin into the soft drink puddle and took a seat. “You have to
understand what it was like”, she continued. “I’d been in bed for so long and Ana was being
such a pain. She was on my case the whole time. So, anyway, he called – “
“Robin called?” I broke in, slightly surprised – Robin wasn’t the proactive type.
“Yes, he did. Asked how I was doing and stuff like that. He was actually really sweet.
And one way or another we decided he should come over. What can I say? I felt really lonely
and I needed someone and there he was.” She sighed. “I know you hate me for this.”
“Come off it”, I said.
“Maybe not hate. But I can tell you’re disappointed.”
28
Was I disappointed? I was. Without knowing why. Lidija hadn’t done anything wrong
or gone behind my back. She’d been harping on about Robin for weeks, and suddenly an
opportunity had presented itself. That was it, and there was really nothing to sulk about.
“Whatever”, I said. “You do what you want.”
I stuffed a handful of fries in my mouth and let my eyes sweep across the room. An
impressively stealthy young man was attacking every vacant table with a spray bottle and a
rag; two girls were giggling softly over cups of ice cream. Once upon a time, I’d been sitting
here with Evelina. Those had, without exception, been tedious afternoons, nothing but an
extension of the school day. She would sit herself down, carefully placing her coat on the
chair next to her; I would throw mine in a much less tidy pile and she’d immediately made
me neaten it up (with a look? I actually have no idea how she did it). After that followed a
pointless rehashing of the day’s events. With Evelina that was always the number one
priority, to fall in line, rules and obedience.
I looked back at Lidija, who had now put her leg up against the chair next to hers so
her knee popped up above table-height. Her fur coat was thrown against the back of her chair,
spreading out like a full pelt. She looked like she owned the place, like there wasn’t a person
in this whole world she’d even consider submitting to. There was nothing small or obedient
about Lidija, nothing whatsoever. And just because of that, I thought to myself, I would never
let her go. Never, ever would I do that.
“Either way, it was a mistake”, she was saying now. “You were right. It was a sucky
idea.”
“What happened?”
She lowered her eyes, looked down into her cup and stirred her ice cubes
aggressively.
“Nothing special.” She pulled a face. “God damn it. This Coke tastes like shit.” She
rummaged around the plastic bag we’d brought, pulled out the bottle of Stoli, screwed the cap
off and poured some into her Coke. “Want some?”
I shook my head.
Suddenly she opened her eyes wide, pulling a wild and tragic face. “God, Lollo, I
can’t even describe it. It was awful, it was the most pointless…”
I spent the rest of the meal being told every last detail of this apparently dead-boring
shag, where most of their energy had been spent making sure Ana wouldn’t hear them. Aside
from that: a few paltry, predictable moments, a shared failure to climax.
“It’s not like I was expecting him to be good. I mean, he never was.” She rolled her
eyes. “And they never are.” She picked up a wilting fry from my box. The she leaned in over
the table: “But this, Lollo, this was just so routine…”
“Routine” – I loved the way Lidija pronounced that word: roo-teen, with a hard r and
a deep, sonorant o-sound. Routine was one of Lidija’s least favourite words. Routines were
something very bad. Grownups had routines; Ana was obsessed with hers. And worst of all
was sex in combination with routine.
“Yeah, but you know”, she pressed on. “First it was my ass…”
“…and then my tits…” I heard myself add.
“… and then my pussy.”
We burst out laughing at the same time. No matter how down we were, sex talk
always put us in a good mood. And no bad sexual experience was so abysmal you couldn’t
turn it into a joke.
“Sex is always such a fucking let down”, she said with a bitter chuckle. “It’s just like
this place. It looks cosy, you think you can get something nice to eat here.” She picked up her
cardboard box and held it up. She had two crumbly McNuggets left; they were propped
29
against each other, making it look like just one nugget, big and misshapen: “But all they give
you is this.”
*
By the time we got out, it was dark. It was a beautiful October night, the sky was black and
full of cold stars. All around us, buildings were twinkling, DIY depots and furniture stores
and home electronics chains, all low-price alternatives within their respective fields. A row of
spherical boxwood shrubberies lined the road; their damp leaves reflected the red glow of
neon signs.
We walked a few languid paces; Lidija pulled out her Marlboros and lit one. She
studied me briefly.
“You know what”, she said, “I really like your makeup.”
She was referring to the rust-coloured eyeshadow I had once again pilfered from
Emma.
“Shut up.” I’ve never been good with compliments.
“But I do. That thing with your eyes, you should always have it like that.”
“It’s eyeshadow; I borrowed it from Emma.”
“Lidija let out a smoke ring. “That bitch. Why are you using her makeup?”
“Because I don’t have any. I can’t remember the last time I bought –“
“No?” We were about fifty yards from the mall. Lidija threw a thoughtful glance at its
merrily lit exterior. “Let me sort you out.”
She backed up a few steps. “Wait here.”
Her cigarette traced long, glowing lines through the air.
“Lidija!” I called.
“What?”
“Aren’t you going to put your cigarette out?”
“No.”
“But they’re going to kick you out.”
She waved her hand, the one that held the cigarette, imperiously in a gesture that
meant something like it’s all good, and even if it’s not, I don’t give toss. Then she turned and
went inside.
A couple of minutes later, she was back, the cigarette still dangling from the corner of
her mouth. Her fur coat flapped grandly around her. Like a croupier with a deck of cards, she
elegantly conjured a lipstick and a small box of eyeshadows in various grey and blue tones
from somewhere inside her coat.
“For you”, she declared. “For my best friend.”
“You’re fast”, I said and let her deposit the things in to my hands. “Thank you very
much.”
She smiled broadly, revealing a row of yellowing teeth. The tip of her nose was red
against her pale face. She was devastatingly beautiful. Tall, exceptional – verging on unreal. I
love her, I thought, I really love her.
“You know what”, she said pensively. “You and me, we’re going to have everything
we want.”
“So you keep saying.”
She nodded. “I’m not just saying it; I know it. Pre ili kasnije.”
30
6
It was just one of the many times Lidija’d tentatively tried striking out in a slightly different
direction. I guess she had been on thirty or so dates of that kind by now – thirty or so
instances of hoping for more, for something other than the strange life we led. The routine
was simple and unvarying: things fell apart and she dusted herself off and was soon back by
my side. Complained a lot, she obviously wasn’t above that, but her tirades always had a
bittersweet ring to them, as though she’d never actually wanted anything but to reunite with
me. What was life if not an endless series of obstacles to be tackled as best you could only to
then have at it again, a little bit stronger each time? Nothing, according to Lidija, nothing. To
fall and get back up, that was the point, the core, the essence. “The meaning of life”, as she so
affectedly put it. Lidija often talked about the meaning of life.
But it was different this time. No matter how hard she tried to put her encounter with
Robin behind her, she couldn’t. Not that she was interested in him anymore; in the weeks that
followed she no longer talked about him in terms of infatuation. It wasn’t about him, bigger
things were at stake. Like her being young – young and beautiful and consequently entitled to
expect things: “It’s fucking mental. That I can’t have even one acceptable fuck? Me?”
We could be standing by the pick and mix in the supermarket, arguing about which
sweets to choose, when she suddenly started talking about sex, how pointless it was, that
someone should have told her the truth, that genuinely mind-blowing sex wasn’t real, it was a
myth people told themselves so they wouldn’t just lie down and die. And without warning
she would lash out at men in general on account of any reason she could come up with, their
lack of commitment, their cowardice and their unwillingness to truly connect. Men, she’d
say, were the main reason happiness was unattainable. Men constantly clamoured for your
attention but then failed to deliver. This was possibly also true of life itself: life kept yanking
at her but didn’t have any actual ambitions for her, not really. And suddenly I was listening to
her talking about how our entire existence was inadequate, that it was like a prologue, that it
had to lead to something bigger, and soon. Our plan to trudge around Vinterviken for ever
was no longer wishful thinking and a sweet fantasy, it was a veritable nightmare: “I’m sick of
this”, she sulked. “This whole fucking shit. What are we doing out here anyway? Why
doesn’t anything ever happen? Something has to happen!”
I made no genuine attempts to participate in her outbursts. I didn’t want to; big
emotional displays stress me out and I’ve never been good at that kind of thing. Not that it
mattered: Lidija was preoccupied with her own theories, hurling out furious questions and
immediately answering them with yet another tirade. Which brings to mind that it was during
those weeks I first noticed her increasingly reckless drinking. She’d pull out the first can of
lager as we were walking down to Vinterviken; by the time we got there, she was usually
drunk already. The alcohol amplified her mannerisms: she didn’t just talk too loudly, she
ranted and waved her arms about, kicked anything in front of her feet, threw stones into the
water, bigger and bigger ones: “This fucking place again”, she’d bellow. “This fucking
place!”
“This fucking place” was Rocky Point. Lidija’s major outbursts tended to coincide
with our excursions there. It was as though the serenity of the place provoked her, whispered
things she didn’t want to hear. Whenever we were out there, her tone become more frantic
and her curses even more numerous, if that’s even possible. I remember one day in particular;
31
it was one of those chilly afternoons when you can sense winter just around the corner: pencil
grey clouds gliding across a transparent sky, the waters of Vinterviken’s dead calm. Lidija
had been antsy the whole way there, complaining about this and that, a new stubborn cough,
the cold, Aspudden and Ana. She was bored; she hated all her clothes. And her lungs hurt. “I
can’t fucking breathe!” she whined when we arrived and then, much louder: “Is this how it’s
supposed to be?” Echoes rebounded, again and again. She got to her feet, glaring at the
horizon, as though she was actually expecting some sort of reply.
But Vinterviken just lay there, mirror-like and as silent as a painting. The world was
indifferent to Lidija and her suffering. And it was when she realised this that she got up,
hurled her beer can away with an overarm throw so violent and hysterical she almost tipped
forward and screamed, louder than I’ve ever heard a person scream: “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
Silent rings rippled across the water. What’s happening? I thought. What’s happening
to Lidija?”
*
But then calmer days followed. It was always like that; no matter what mood Lidija was in,
you could be sure she’d get herself together sooner or later. I think it was pure selfpreservation, to save her strength, because it’s impossible to carry on like she did without
pulling back every once in a while. Then her cigarette would once again rest in a limp hand,
she’d prattle on about trivial things, about the weather, about whether there were any parties
we could go to, huh? She was so convincing at those times, so calm and easily amused that I
let myself believe her frustrations were played out for now, that things would go back to
normal.
As it turned out, they wouldn’t.
“This thing with Robin, I just can’t accept it”, she said one evening as we were
walking home along the deserted streets of Aspudden and conversation had stalled a long
time ago. “It’s just all so sick. It can’t be this hard to find a good shag. You know, for a while
I even considered becoming a lesbian. Lidija the dyke. Imagine that.” She let out a loud, halfhearted laugh, kind of like a diva who’s grown tired of the spotlight. “There’s just one catch”,
she carried on, sidestepping a puddle treacherously glaring at us in the gloom. “Do you know
what it is?”
Even though I was fairly uninterested in where this ridiculous question might lead, I
empathetically shook my head.
“The catch is”, she said, “that I’m not a lesbian.”
“Sure, that would make it harder.”
“To be completely honest I don’t even like women; women bore me. I mean, you
don’t bore me –“ She studied me briefly to assess whether I was ready for a longer lecture on
the subject, and then went for it: “Either way, women, I thought to myself, women are pretty
dull. And then I realised. Maybe I’m the one who’s dull? I mean, what’s to say I’m so
fucking exciting? Nothing, Lollo, nothing.” She’d hit her stride now. “The truth is that I
spread my gorgeous legs, and that’s all I do.”
I laughed at this. It really was easy to imagine Lidija with her legs in the air like some
Marie-Antoinette, muted sighs, longing glances at her pack of smokes on some dresser. All
the while expecting her partner’s undivided attention.
“And that’s why I think I should give him another chance. I have to. To show him
what I can do. It’s all about showing people what you can do. That’s how I see it. You have
to give to receive, right? It’s pretty obvious when you think about it.”
This was a twist I wasn’t fully prepared for and it instantly made me cold with
disappointment.
32
“And then what?” I said. “If it completely sucks?”
“If it completely sucks”, she said and put her arm around me like a drunken sailor.
“Then I promise you, Lollo, I swear, I’ll forget all about guys, sex, all of it. I’ll become an
old spinster, just like Ana. If this doesn’t work – then I’m fucking done.”
*
Several days went by without the subject of Robin coming up again. I secretly hoped Lidija
was going to forget the whole thing. Sometimes she’d have an idea of some kind (usually
involving leaving this place), and even advocated for it pretty persuasively, only to eventually
just drop it. And maybe she would have this time too, if we hadn’t happened to walk past our
old school.
The whole thing was a coincidence; Ana had asked Lidija to post a letter but the
mailboxes in the town centre were out of service due to vandalism and customers were
advised to use the ones by the high school instead. The day was wearing on. Aspudden
glittered ever more wintery in the sunshine, frostbitten trees, a hint of ice around the puddles.
We were in a good mood and strode through the town centre with what was for us an unusual
spring in our step. God knows why; I was actually kind of tired, more tired than I usually was
this time of year, and Lidija was still snivelling – these days she had added both tissues and
nose sprays to the motley jumble she kept in the deep pockets of the fur coat, and both were
put to good use more or less constantly.
Maybe our confidence stemmed from the fact that we were unusually good-looking?
There was a power inherent in manipulating and improving one’s appearance that I was in the
process of discovering; I was now in the habit of applying thick layers of the eyeshadow
Lidija had given me. Lidija had countered by adorning herself with an array of necklaces,
crucifixes and charms; a sparkling tangle that bounced hard against her slender chest. And
she’d added a new winsome aspect to her makeup; a thick line of eyeliner that climbed high
up her temples, making her look like a modern day Cleopatra. “Not without my cat eyes”,
she’d say. That was her motto that autumn.
The high school was a short walk south of the town centre. Out there, the buildings
gave way to a grey strip of flatland I’d always disliked because it reminded me of the
depressing no-man’s-land you had to go through to get to relatives in other suburbs. Winding
bicycle paths, empty bus stops that no one could even be bothered to tag. For some reason the
whole area reeked of stable and hay.
The silvery school building gleamed in the low, sharp light. It looked like a miniature
military facility; tiny barrack-like blocks on either side, oversized, trailing rain gutters. In
some ways a normal school, I guess, school yard and basketball hoops, even an athletics
facility round the back, where PE lessons were usually conducted during the warm season.
But Aspudden High School was also an unusually small school, barely bigger than your
average primary school. Only the same old Aspudden crowd went here; the junior high
classes were just rearranged a bit and then you could look forward to another three years with
the same old, familiar faces. I’d never liked that school. And I didn’t like coming here now,
seeing the old building unchanged but with completely different people in it. I think it had to
do with being reminded that things just go on, people come and go and we’re all just
insignificant parts of an eternal cycle… That’s always bothered me.
Students were slipping out the small front door in pairs, crossing the yard in the
direction of the bus stop. There was a line of rowans, birches and other newly-planted trees
around the school yard; we found the mailboxes at the end of this row of vegetation. Lowhanging branches covered them so completely it prompted the question whether they were
ever emptied.
33
That’s when the subject came up.
“I almost called Robin today.” Lidija said as she deposited the letter into the box.
“But then I didn’t.” She heaved a sigh. “I just had no clue what to say.”
“Just say you’re feeling better and want to see him again?” My tone was overly
chipper. I had now discounted the possibility that she might forget the whole business and no
longer saw any recourse but to simulate some sort of interest in it.
She shook her head. “Ask him over and have Ana listening in from the other room
again? No thanks. It has to be special this time. I just don’t know in what way. For a while I
thought about dressing up, but I don’t know.” She pulled a face. “I mean, that’s exactly the
kind of thing Mimmi would do.”
“Outside”, I heard myself say. I don’t know why. I had no love of outside sex, never
even fantasised about it.
But Lidija stopped dead as though it were a stroke of genius.
“Outside? Do you think so?
“It was just a suggestion.”
“But it’s not a bad idea.” She pulled her Marlboros from her pocket. “I’ve never done
it outside.”
We took a few slow steps across the school yard before stopping to look at the school
one last time. That was when Lidija, strangely frozen, caught sight of the big sign next to the
entrance.
“Hold on.”
“What?”
“School… don’t you get it?” She raised her cigarette to her lips, inhaled deeply, her
eyes predatory. “Come on, it would be perfect, right?”
But you can’t get in there at night”, I objected. “They close at seven and that’s that. I
know because I left my bag once and I barely… either way, that’s what the janitor told me.
You’re lucky as hell, he said, five more minutes and you would have been toast.”
“What about Emma?”
“Emma?”
“You know how much she brags about having access to the building. She has a key.
She’s told us a thousand times.”
It was true. The person in charge of the Christmas Show had access to a key to the
school so there could be evening rehearsals in the gym after the janitor had gone home. And
because Emma had been in charge of not only the Christmas Show, but countless similar
events, anniversary celebrations and balls and whatnot, she’d been granted permanent key
access. Something she liked to remind people of at every opportunity.
“If I were you”, I said, “I wouldn’t exactly count on Emma helping.”
But Lidija ignored me. “Do you know where I want to do it? In the gym.” She was
practically bouncing up and down with excitement. “Oh, Lollo, it’s going to be so great. I’ve
always wanted to be a naughty school girl.”
“But Emma…” I protested.
“Whatever.” She shot me a carefree smile. “Just talk to her.”
*
That day, I got to know a new side of Lidija, or at least a side I hadn’t seen in a long time.
Once we were back in the town centre, we ambled around for a while to keep the ever more
invasive cold at bay, and Lidija practically skipped down the streets, humming pop song after
pop song – I’d barely ever heard Lidija sing after we finished high school. She suddenly
34
seemed genuinely happy and it moved me, so much so that I actually started contemplating
helping her to execute this whim of hers.
And why wouldn’t I? Lidija had done so much for me, added some colour to an
existence I’d thought of as completely pointless until I met her. And what had I done for her?
Nothing at all. She could have traded up for basically anyone; the world was full of people
like me, colourless, reserved people devoid of ambition – if not for her, I would probably still
be lying in a lethargic heap on my bed in front of the TV. She was one in a million, I wasn’t.
And here she was, wanting to cheer herself up with some harmless shenanigans. Was I going
to get in the way of that? I couldn’t. I was going to get her that key, even if I had to tear it out
of Emma’s hands.
“I think this is going to change everything”, Lidija mused, standing outside my house
that night. “I don’t know why but it feels true.” Her lipstick, a dark crimson shade she used
more and more, had almost worn off, apart from a line just below her cupid bow. She fixed
me with a look that showed no sign of inebriation, even though we had drunk considerable
amounts of wine over the past few hours. “You don’t believe me, do you? You never do –“
“I do”, I broke in. And then I said, to my own and her great surprise: “Maybe it
actually will, Lidija.”
*
That same night, Lidija called me, giddy with excitement:
“Did you talk to her?”
“Not yet.”
“Go talk to her.”
I sighed. “What do you want me to say? Hi Emma, well, you see, I kind of need the
key to the school because the thing is that Lidija is planning to fuck Robin in the gym?”
“Tell her…” She fell silent. “Just make something up!”
*
After we hung up, I went straight to Emma. Might as well get it over with, I figured. With
Lidija it was always wisest to obey without delay, because either way, she wouldn’t let up
until you relented in pure self-defence and did whatever it took to shut her up.
Emma was sitting on the edge of her bed, busy with her elaborate evening ritual
(bathing and hair brushing, moisturising every conceivable part of her body), when I entered.
She was holding a jar of something thick and yellow, and the air was heavy with a sweet
fragrance.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Cocoa butter.” She spoke in her normal, uppity tone. “It’s preventative, winter’s
almost here.”
She looked to be in absolute top shape. Her hair was thick and almost unnaturally
shiny, slender muscles flexed under her tanned skin. Emma’s skin tone was naturally dark, a
trait on our dad’s side that arbitrarily affected one sibling in each family – in ours, Emma
had, inevitably, been the lucky one. She wasn’t actually amazingly good-looking, in fact, we
looked a lot alike – same symmetry, same lack of true, captivating beauty – but thanks to her
naturally bronzed skin she’d always belonged to the top tier. And she knew how to make the
most of it. Wherever Emma went you’d find a battery of lotions: suntan lotion and after sun
in the summer, rich, nourishing equivalents in the winter, various other creams and
ointments, one for every situation.
“Emma”, I said. “You have a key to the school, right?”
35
She put the jar down on the bed. “Yeah, why?”
“I’d like to borrow it.”
“What for?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
She raised an annoyed eyebrow: “You can hardly expect me to give it to you without
knowing what you need it for?”
“Alright, I need to get into the gym.”
She looked at me with undisguised surprise. “The gym?”
“Yeah. You have the key, right?”
“Of course I do, that’s where we rehearse for the Christmas Show.”
“So, can I borrow it sometime?”
I’d expected more questions. Not that we were in the habit of poking our noses into
each other’s affairs, but Emma took school events and the responsibility associated with them
very seriously and if she was going to kick up a fuss about anything, it’d be this.
She studied me for a moment. But just when it looked like she was about to launch
into a full blown interrogation that would have forced me to cobble together some kind of
stupid lie, she seemed to recall our unwritten rule. She said: “Let me think about it, okay?”
36
7
What follows now is a section I would have preferred to skip over entirely because it’s
boring, involves my dad and doesn’t have all that much to do with my story, but which I have
to put in anyway so you can understand how I finally managed to get the key off Emma.
It all happened because of a dinner a few days later, an awful dinner no one saw the
point of except mum. I’d listened in on parts of their phone conversation: he’d called for
some other reason (something about grandma’s bad heart – dad had this weird idea about
needing to update mum on people’s health because she’s a nurse), but had concluded with an
obligatory request to “see the girls” (at least that’s how he usually put it). Mum had taken it
upon herself to acquiesce, agreeing a specific date and everything.
We met up at a restaurant on the outskirts of town – we always did. It was a
compromise between Aspudden and dad’s flat in one of the northern suburbs. He’d moved
there relatively recently; Emma and I both considered it a major betrayal. Northern suburbs
equalled snobs and ostentatious idyll, with villas and apple trees and beach promenades. And
not the seedy, suggestive kind of beach promenade that runs alongside Vinterviken, but rather
the merry, meandering kind with jetties and man-made beaches. Doctors and TV people lived
up north, not people like us. Consequently, Emma and I had concluded that dad was no
longer one of us.
It was early on a Friday night. Dad was wearing his usual uniform of course: an illfitting suit, white shirt. He’d worn the same clothes since the dawn of time, and had been
uncomfortable in them for about as long. That’s the thing about dad; there were rules and you
followed them. To the best of your ability.
As usual, we had nothing to talk about. Emma told him about the Christmas Show,
but succinctly, without bigging herself up. I lied and said I had a lead on a job. Dad talked
about some trip to Spain (“amazing food”, “amazing people”) and then he told us about
Mildred.
In recent years, he’d been in an on again, off again relationship with a woman called
Mildred, a tall thing with frizzy hair and fragile wrists. That relationship had now come to an
end, he informed us emphatically, as though we cared – dad had this delusional notion that
Emma and I thought about Mildred in that fraught, spiteful way children sometimes reserve
for their parents’ new partners. The real reason we avoided her was that she was boring.
Mildred was a lame, bland woman whose interests (cooking, mushroom picking) failed to
overlap with ours in any way. To make matters worse, she had a horrible son, Magnus, whose
interests were even more boring than his mother’s (sports and computer games), with whom
she eagerly tried to fix us up.
“Have whatever you want; it’s on me”, dad said when our menus arrived.
Which sounds more generous that it was. The restaurant we were in was classic dad:
rickety chairs, crocheted doilies, non-descript menu where no dish cost more than 150 kronor.
Not that he was cheap per se. But he was a coward, unable to make any decisions beyond the
non-optional ones.
A waitress came to our table. We gave her our orders – steak and béarnaise sauce for
me and dad, chicken salad for Emma. The waitress left, returned with a small bread basket
and left again.
Silence fell.
37
“So,” dad said with feigned enthusiasm. “What else have you been up to then?
Anything fun?”
Emma glanced in my direction. As the older sister I was expected to take charge.
“Nothing special”, I said, “that I can think of, anyway.”
Emma confirmed my statement by shaking her head.
“Well, that’s the way of things, isn’t it?” dad said with a laugh. “Life just chugs
along.”
I looked at him. The sight made me uneasy. He was so small, so meaningless. Once
upon a time, he’d actually been pretty good-looking, “dashing” as mum put it, but he wasn’t
anymore. His hair was thinning; nothing but empty phrases ever came out of his mouth. So
empty that these days, he felt compelled to underline each one with an even emptier gesture.
It was as though he were completely unable to stray outside the one role he still mastered, the
role of claims investigator for one of the bigger insurance companies; each time I saw him,
that became even more glaringly obvious.
Someone coughed. Dad drummed his index and long fingers against the table top.
This was torture, with dad everything was always truly unbearable.
Then Emma’s phone rang. She answered, uttered some muffled syllables and dashed
out to the coatroom. Five long minutes later she returned, with tiny, reluctant steps, as though
she didn’t intend to sit back down.
“Well, that was Kelly…”
“Kelly, is that one of your girlfriends?” Dad asked with a sheepish grin.
Emma confirmed this with a nod, unable to completely hide the contempt she felt at
dad’s ignorance. Kelly, a pig snouted little brunette with an Audrey Hepburn complex, just as
vain and fussy as Emma but with slightly better manners, was not one of Emma’s girlfriends
– she was Emma’s best friend since forever.
“She broke up with her boyfriend”, Emma said. “She’s really upset and can’t be alone
right now.”
Mild panic surged through my chest. Is Emma going to leave me here with dad? She
wouldn’t dare leave me here.
“So I’m wondering” – she drew each word out as much as she could – “is it cool if
I… leave?”
I shot her a look promising bloody death, which she obviously ignored. Dad was
clueless and just stared straight ahead, as lost as if the conversation had been conducted in a
foreign language.
In the end, the penny did drop though. “But the food?” He asked, dumbfounded.
“Shouldn’t you at least –“
She broke in: “I’ll go talk to the kitchen. I’m sure it’s no problem.”
I wanted to say something mean, anything, but couldn’t think of a slam that wouldn’t
also let dad know exactly what I thought about sitting here alone with him.
Silence fell once more. Until dad spread his hands out in a stiff, rehearsed gesture that
made him look like the insignificant insurance man he actually was, and blurted out:
“Well, what do you say – Louise? We’ll be fine on our own, right?”
*
If dinner had been tedious while Emma was still there, it was nothing compared to what lay
ahead.
My sense of duty as the older sister had compelled me to stay for two hours, two
interminable hours, hardly one minute of which had passed painlessly. Our food had been
cold. Nevertheless, we’d both still ordered dessert, ice cream for me, cheesecake for dad – the
38
ice cream had melted as soon as I stuck my spoon into it. We’d agonised over finding new
topics of conversation. Dad had told countless jokes that neither one of us could bring
ourselves to laugh at, asked the same idiotic questions several times (“So, how are things
otherwise? Good?), and told a long and seemingly pointless anecdote about a work dinner
that had gone off the rails (people slipping on the new wooden floor, plates being dropped).
Not because any of it amused him either, but simply because he knew as well as I did that
nothing but more excruciating silence waited for us on the other side of each anecdote.
I marched home through a pitch black Aspudden, fuming. I was angry with mum for
making me do this and livid with Emma for having the nerve to abandon me. On my way up
the stairs I prepared a little outburst that would put them both in their place.
I’d barely made it through the door before mum popped up with her usual
interrogation (“How was he?”, “Did you agree on a date to meet up again?”).
“Why don’t you ask Emma”, I hissed. “I’m sure she can tell you. At least about the
fifteen minutes she put in before taking off.” I kicked my shoes off in a messy pile and shot a
furious glance in the direction of her room. “Is she home?”
Mum gave me an alarmed look.
“What? No, she’s not here, I –“
“Then I guess she’s still off holding Kelly’s hand. She was so upset Emma had to
split. And leave me with dad.”
I started walking toward my room, making it clear I had no intention of talking about
this further.
Mum tiptoed after me, submissively. “Lollo, talk to me, what happened, I don’t
understand.”
“I said, ask Emma.”
Then I slammed my door shut behind me.
*
Later on, I heard Emma crash through the front door. Muffled voices from the hallway,
mum’s mildly phrased reproaches, Emma’s dismissal of them (“So, what, I should have just
blown Kelly off?”, “You do know Kelly’s my best friend, right?”)
Revolting little Emma. Revolting little self-absorbed brat. I knew she was an idiot, but
she’d always had some semblance of a moral compass. Clearly not anymore. I’m never
speaking to her again, I thought. From now on I’m going to completely ignore her.
It was a vow I repeated to myself throughout the rest of the night, every time I heard
the sound of her voice. Fuck Emma. From now on she was dead to me.
And then she suddenly appeared in my doorway.
“You wanted this, right?” Her right hand was extended and a small, shiny object
dangled from it. “The key to the school. You needed it, didn’t you?”
“Oh, right, that”, I said, kind of caught off guard. This was a way of making up for the
dinner I hadn’t seen coming.
“Here, you can borrow it. But I have to have it back by Thursday at the latest. That’s
when we rehearse.”
I got up from the bed and let her drop the key into my hand.
“Thursday at the latest”, she reiterated.
“Sure, of course.”
“And hey”, she said, “don’t do anything stupid, okay?”
“No”, I said. “Of course I won’t.”
*
39
Just before going to bed, I called Lidija. She picked up, sounding hoarse and half-asleep.
“I have the key”, I said.
“To the school? Seriously?”
“Yeah. Emma just gave it to me. But you only have until Thursday. Then she has to
have it back.”
“No problem.”
We were quiet for a moment.
“God, Lollo”, she breathed. “This is going to be… fantastično!”
*
The next day, Lidija gave Robin a ring. They had been in touch during the week and she’d
expected an immediate response. But none was forthcoming. Repeated attempts to reach him
with via both text and voicemail – not a peep. Finally she faced the music and called his
house.
Like most people under the age of twenty-five in Aspudden, not just Lidija and me,
Robin still lived at home; his younger sister Amanda answered. Amanda was the same age as
Emma, but belonged to a different social group, “the disgusting emo chicks”, as Emma had
been known to call her and her friends, which basically meant they had some interests other
than their looks, such as music and film. Amanda informed Lidija that Robin was away with
work and that he was coming back tomorrow, Sunday, at the latest. “Sunday”, Lidija
whimpered and hugged herself in the chill November air, “why can’t it be fucking Sunday
already?”
That was the day I happened to spot Nicole again. It was later that night and the whole
thing happened in the few short minutes it took Lidija to pop into the supermarket for a
packet of smokes. I waited outside for the simple reason that I was still hard at work on my
dinner, a tuna baguette mum had left in the fridge for me. I sat on a bench, licking tuna off
my fingers, when I saw a car come to a stop outside the drycleaners across the street, no more
than twenty yards away.
It was a black sports car, a BMW. The windows were tinted so I couldn’t see the
driver (I later concluded it must have been Alex sitting there and I remember thinking he
must really have got his act together recently). Out climbed Nicole.
Little Nicole, each time I saw her, she looked smaller. She awkwardly pulled a bulky
plastic bag from the floor on passenger side. A brief exchange, a quick goodbye. She’d just
started walking when the driver opened his door and called her back. She stopped, returned to
the car and leaned down. They talked about something; I couldn’t hear what. Then she closed
the door again. The car silently rolled off along the icy road and disappeared.
She stood in the middle of the street like a castaway, looking this way and that. Then
she started moving toward me with short, shuffling steps. Something about her interested me
so I watched as she approached. She was in better shape than last time we met, at least
superficially; she’d washed her hair; her clothes were remarkably clean. Her makeup was the
normal teenage mess, but at least it was freshly-applied, which made her look healthier than
before. But she didn’t look happier. Not that she looked unhappy, exactly, but tired and
absent. For a while, I thought she was going to meet my eye, but just as she passed me she
turned her face away.
It was a simple scene, uninteresting even. But if it can be said that I ever had some
kind of early premonition, that was the moment. There was an air of death around Nicole, so
palpable I stayed on the bench for a long time, staring into empty space.
40
41
8
The weekend came and went.
“He’s obviously off with some little slut”, Lidija muttered that Monday after pulling
her phone out to once again confirm that the display didn’t show any missed calls.
She’d promised herself not to call Robin again, but couldn’t stop herself and in the
end dialled his number not just once but three times. But he remained missing in action. That
evening, when we were hanging out outside my house, she was beside herself, chain-smoking
frantically and heaping Serbian curse words on Robin. He was nothing but a simple “debil”
and a “kretenčina” and she was never going to have anything to do with him again, she
declared. Only to add that she was fully aware this wasn’t the first time she made that
promise but that this time –“ovaj put!” – she meant it.
Tuesday rolled around. And Wednesday. By now, Lidija had given up hope and we
had resumed our old routines. That afternoon, we were at the bowling lanes, munching on
yesterday’s loot, mostly sweets. Lidija screwed the lid off some sort of gum-in-a-tube she
often insisted on pocketing. Did I want any? Then her phone rang.
It was Robin. He told her he was in one of the towns inland (come to think of it, it was
Mariefred; strange how I remember that). The job, laying new floors in a hotel, had overrun,
he explained, and he’d left his charger at home. It was only late yesterday, when he called
home from the hotel reception, that he’d been told Lidija had been looking for him.
Lidija’s face went from suspicious to neutral to vaguely content. “Sure, fine,
alright…”
After finishing the call, she said: “He’s coming.”
“Now?”
“Soon.”
I lowered my voice. “Did you mention your… plan?”
“I told him I had a surprise for him.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes, we’re in a bit of a hurry, right? Since the key has to go back to Emma
tomorrow.” She tapped her nails against the table to underline the tight time frame.
“I’m sure we can make her lend it to us again”, I said. I actually wasn’t sure of that at
all, but to rush into something like this on account of a key didn’t strike me as a stellar idea.
She seemed to contemplate this. But then she said: “We’re meeting him at seven.”
I needed to pee and got up. On my way to the bathroom I heard myself exclaim: “We?
What do you mean ‘we’? In your dreams am I going to –“
“But you have the key.”
I stopped short. “The key, right.” I stuck my hands in my pockets and dug around. “I
think I have it on me, you can have it right now.”
But when I fished it out, Lidija raised her hand like a stop sign.
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because”, she said, “I want you to come with us.”
*
42
They needed a lookout, Lidija said, trying to explain why she wanted me to come. I was to
stand some ways away and call out if someone was coming. That was her plan.
Her request came as a minor shock. I’d never witnessed or been in the immediate
vicinity of two people having sex and the mere thought of it had always filled me with a kind
of disgusted exhilaration. For instance, what were we going to say to each other afterwards?
Try as I may, I couldn’t see how this would be anything but painful for me. But Lidija nagged
me; the whole thing was going to be over in jiffy, “fun”, “different”, maybe even “exciting”. I
told her I wasn’t so sure about that. But in the end, I still gave in.
At about half six, Robin called to say he was running late. He’d just made it home and
had to shower before he could meet up. He called again. Was it cool if he had something to
eat first as well? We finally arranged to meet outside the school because Lidija and I had
been sitting in the bowling alley since three and needed to move.
I’d expected the high school to look the same as last time I saw it: front doors opening
and closing with a dull gasp; students slowly making their way across the gravel. But when
we got there, it was half seven already and a dense darkness had enveloped the entire area.
There was not a soul in sight. I had forgotten how inhospitable this place was after dark. Ink
black sky, not a star. The flat silhouette of the school was only just visible. The only sources
of light, two lampposts on either side of the parking metre in the parking lot, mostly served to
accentuate the gloom.
Lidija gingerly stepped out into the parking lot. The sound of her heels, a hollow
creaking, ricocheted into the silence.
“These cars…” she said slowly. “You don’t think people are still here, do you?”
There were about ten cars in the parking lot. But weren’t there always cars in parking
lots, whether or not anyone was actually around?
“I don’t know”, I said. “Probably not.” Then I said: “Hey, are you still sure about
this?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t seem it.”
She spun to face me and fixed me with a steady gaze. “Of course I am. Why else are
we here?” She lit a cigarette and took a few rapid, overly aggressive drags. “Don’t act like
you’re my mother, okay?”
Fine, okay, Lidija, have it your way. I really had no desire whatsoever to bicker.
We sat down on a damp bench next to the school building, in silence. Lidija was
noticeably on edge; she pulled a knee up to her chin but immediately let it drop back down;
she made strange sounds with her mouth. Every five minutes, the pulled her phone out and
checked the time on the glowing screen. “Where the hell is Robin?” she hissed. “He should
have been here ages ago.” With every reiteration, I could feel myself tensing up. This actually
fairly innocent lark suddenly seemed completely mental, as though we were about to do
something criminal, like kidnap a toddler or something.
At long last, Robin did show, chary like a ghost in the dark.
“There you are”, he said. He was freshly showered and rosy-cheeked. “So, tell me,
what’s going on out here?”
*
“Would someone mind explaining what we’re doing here?” he asked again when we reached
the front doors.
“I told you, it’s a surprise.” Lidija was still her agitated, short-tempered self: “Wait
and see, okay.”
43
Since I had the key it fell to me to open the doors. I put my hands in my jeans pockets.
A wan light trickled out through the glass doors, as though a few fluorescent lights had been
left on to keep intruders out. Which obviously made me feel like one. My jittery fingers were
having trouble finding the key.
“Shit, I was sure I had it here…” I squeaked.
Lidija stomped her feet impatiently. It was properly cold now. “Come on”, she
grunted and rubbed her hands together.
I finally found it, wrapped in a torn receipt. I put it in the lock and turned it. It didn’t
move. I tried the other direction but could only turn it ninety degrees. After jiggling it back
and forth several times I turned around.
“It’s not working”, I whimpered.
Lidija stared at me. “Try again”, she commanded.
“But I’ve tried several times and it’s not working. I don’t know what the problem is.
Maybe Emma didn’t give me the right key or maybe –“
“Let me try”, she said and snatched the key from me.
She resolutely stuck it back into the lock. But she couldn’t get the door open either.
Out of pure frustration she grabbed the door handle with a muffled roar.
“It’s open?” she exclaimed with unveiled surprise.
A wave of relief washed over us and we snuck inside.
*
If the high school looked tiny and odd from the outside, the inside was more typical: wood
effect laminate flooring and cheap fake plants everywhere; there was a notice board on the
wall with little paper trays attached for the submission of various types of applications. We
peered into this dark cauldron of institutional interior design. They were going to fuck here?
Other people might associate school environments with sex, but to me the two things were
diametrically opposed, incompatible things. This was a school, no more, no less, and at best, I
thought to myself, we could make the most of our break-in by setting up camp in some corner
and drinking the rest of the Tavernello I was still lugging around.
“This is actually pretty sweet”, Robin said. “The old alma mater, maybe I should
swing by and check things out more often.”
Lidija interrupted him with a finger against her lips: “Shhh”, she breathed. “We don’t
know if we’re alone here.”
As a matter of fact, we were about to find out that we weren’t. The gym, our
destination, was located in the school’s west wing. As soon as we opened the big, heavy door
to that part of the building, the silence was shattered by a distant crash. We took a few
hesitant steps forward. Further down the corridor, I noticed a pool of light on the floor. The
unmistakable sound of voices, echoes – there were people here, that much was clear.
I wanted to turn back. But Lidija pressed on, her face set. Soon all kinds of noise hit
us: slaps and thuds, the squeak of rubber soles against a plastic floor. It was the sound of a
floorball game. A bunch of social league teams used the school at night, had done for years
and years. I knew it, Lidija knew it. How the hell had that managed to slip our minds?
The sight that greeted us when we stuck our heads in the gym was a sharp, surreal,
technicolour counterpoint to the darkness that had surrounded us for the past hour. Inside, a
group of men were running around holding sticks: meaty backs, t-shirts with prints. Names
and cheers rang out across the room. The harsh, white light of the fluorescents blinded me so
completely I almost fell over.
“Fuck”, Lidija said and stalked off.
44
For a moment, I thought she was heading home. But I found her leaning against the
wall in the hallway just outside, her fingers in her packet of Marlboros.
“What the hell are we going to do now?” She said. “It’s not like I wanted an
audience.” She pulled out a cigarette. “Sports”, she grimaced. “I hate sports.”
“We can do this some other time, you know?” I offered. Whenever actually.”
Another time, Lidija, let’s do it some other time. Come on, let’s go back –
“But I want to do it today.” She shoved the cigarettes back in her pocket. Then she
took a few steps down the hallway. “Follow me.”
“Hey guys, what’s going on, would you mind telling me now?” Robin laughed.
“You’re not about to make me play floorball, are you?”
“Just keep up”, Lidija called.
It was as though we’d climbed into a culvert. The darkness pressed in on us; there
were pipes everywhere. A cold, musty smell emanated from the walls – which made sense
because on the other side, they were lined with changing rooms.
At the far end of the corridor, Lidija pushed open one of the doors.
“And now what?” Robin asked when we’d all stepped inside. There was still no hint
he had any idea what we were doing here.
Yes, now what? I thought. What the fuck do we do now?
I looked at Lidija. She took a deep breath.
“Robin”, she said. “I want you to fuck me.”
*
We all just stood there, in the middle of the room.
Robin’s light-heartedness had evaporated. “What, here?” he stammered and glanced
around, bewildered, to see if he might in fact be the butt of some practical joke. “You can’t
be serious?” But nothing about Lidija – her weight on one hip, her lips tightly pursed–
signalled anything other than utter seriousness and when this dawned on him, red blotches
began appearing on his neck. Then he fell silent, like he always did when that happened.
I felt violently awkward. I realised I was witnessing something that was none of my
business.
“Lidija,” I heard myself say, “I think I’m going to go outside.”
“Wait.”
I thought she was going to remind me of my promise to stand guard and instruct me
about where and in what way I should take up position. But she said: “Lollo, I want you to
watch.”
For a second I was as speechless as Robin. “What?” I managed. “What are you
talking about?”
“Come on, you’ve watched tonnes of porn.” She glared at me. “Don’t go all prim on
me now.”
“But I don’t actually think Robin wants me to…” My completely sincere objection
sounded like a lame, ridiculous excuse.
“Robin”, she said, “You don’t mind if Lollo stays, do you?”
He squirmed. “Actually, this… I don’t even get what I’m supposed to –“
It was all he had time to say before she turned to me again: “See, no problems here.”
And that’s how it happened that Lidija, without proper consent from Robin or me,
kicked her little project into action.
I don’t know if it was because I was particularly underfed (the nutritionally
substandard meal at the lanes was the only thing I’d eaten that day), or just on account of the
circumstances, but the opening scenes passed by in a blur. I felt acutely tired. For a while, I
45
noticed everything except what was taking place right in front of me. My sandy shoes had left
ugly tracks on the floor. Are you not supposed to keep your shoes on in changing rooms? I
wrestled with this idiotic question for a while. I gazed over at the far corner of the room.
Once, I recalled, I’d stolen fifty kronor out of the pocket of a pair of jeans that had been
hanging there. Or had I? I was suddenly plunged into a confused no man’s land where
nothing was certain, where I would barely have been able to recite my own civic registration
number.
In front of me, Lidija and Robin were getting started. She kissed him lightly. He
caressed her upper arms softly. Then they started undressing.
The sight made me so dizzy I wobbled.
“Lidija, I have to leave. I can’t…” I mumbled while I impulsively moved toward the
door.
At the very moment when I leaned against the door, my eyes met Lidija’s. I’d
expected her to say something, subject me to another attempt at persuasion or at least express
her disappointment. But she didn’t. She wasn’t looking at me at all. It was just a glazed,
brown pair of eyes rocking up and down, looking at something, probably, but not at me. And
it was overwhelming to me, the chance to watch without being watched.
Suddenly my senses were sharpened and everything appeared as clearly as through a
magnifying glass. There they were, Lidija and Robin, having sex right in front of me. Robin
behind Lidija, his hands on her hips, Lidija with one foot on the wooden bench – exactly like
she had repeatedly told me this fuck would happen. She was right in claiming this position
was something special; it was a sensational, open and uninhibited position that obliterated my
reservations.
I just stared at her. Dark, almost dusky nipples against milky white skin, two tiny
birthmarks on her bony torso. I tried to focus on the birthmarks, and when I couldn’t, on her
shoulders. For a few seconds I stared unabashedly. Genitals rubbing against each other, slow,
rhythmical, neither hard nor gentle. This sight gave me, despite my copious porn
consumption, new insights: just how prominent that ridge running along the underside of
cocks really is, how the inner labia tremble slightly with every thrust in and out, in and out…
I took a deep, sharp breath. This wasn’t ordinary arousal, it was a different kind, the
kind you get from wet dreams, the kind that can’t be satisfied and so just rushes round and
round, round and round until it turns into nausea. I was rooted to the spot, unable to break the
spell. In the end, my eyes climbed higher, searching for Lidija’s. And this time she looked
back.
“Do you like it?” She breathed.
“Mm”, I said.
46
Part II
47
9
There’s Lidija, tall and roaring, equal parts life and destruction. But who am I? – you’re
probably wondering by now. Answer: barely anyone at all. And I’m not being coy. This is
really all I was: indolent and feeble, unable to undertake anything whatsoever. Some of us are
just like that, I guess, vague and unusable for stories, only present to make other people shine.
Lidija was of a different opinion, of course. Utterly blind to her own incandescence,
she claimed I was the more clearly defined of us. In her eyes, I was a determined, cool
character whose prevailing principles included things like “terseness” and “integrity”. “You
want to know the difference between Lollo and me?” she might say. “Lollo doesn’t talk a lot
of bullshit.” But that was Lidija and she’s always had her own way of looking at things.
Lidija, if you ever read this, I want you to know that I loved the way you gave my existence
some kind of meaning, as though my lack of life was a kind of life, my lack of character traits
a character trait. I said nothing because I had nothing to say and I wanted nothing because I
suffer from a critical lack of ambition.
But then winter came, the longest one I’ve ever experienced. When I think back, it
still comes back to me as a washed-out vista, bleak and stagnant. Neither before nor after
have I ever experienced a season so devoid of temper; days turning into weeks and weeks
into months without the slightest break in the dense fog. I walked in circles, unable to find a
way out. I’ve only been properly fed up once and it was that winter.
*
There was a rumble outside – the sound of bodies pouring out into the hallway as the
floorball game came to an end. We all froze with the kind of instantaneousness you get when
someone blows a whistle. With a swift but elegant movement, kind of like when a male
figure skater sets his partner back down, Lidija and Robin embraced and then bolted in
opposite directions.
We analysed the aftershocks in tense silence.
“They’re not coming in here”, Lidija declared, her voice flat. She was sitting on one
of the benches, picking through her discarded clothes.
“Should we get out of here?” Robin said, twitchy like a squirrel. He was already fully
dressed. “Yeah? I mean we can’t –“
“I told you, they’re not coming in here.” Lidija was digging through the pockets of
her fur coat. “And I need a smoke.”
“Lidija, what the fuck, let’s go, you can smoke –“
“Take it easy.”
I stared at her. Was this a failure? An embarrassing end to this whole affair?
“Hey”, I said, “are you okay, or?”
She didn’t reply straight away. She’d fished out a cigarette and took a few puffs
before lodging it between her lips. With some effort, she put one sock on and started looking
for the other. “Sure”, was all she said.
We snuck back up the hallway without a sound. The floorball gang was still hanging
about in a rowdy group outside the gym – sports bags and back slapping and post-game
reviews. We tiptoed past, without a word. A man in a shiny shell top backed into me, but
48
we’d already reached the main door when he realised what had happened and turned around
with an overly apologetic gesture. (Was that the man? The one who’d later claim in some
newspaper that he’d seen us, “several times” even? I still wonder about that sometimes.)
The plastic plants, the notice board, the front door. Then we stepped back out into the
night. We looked at each other, some kind of tension was released – and all three of us started
laughing. Tonight hadn’t been a failure. On the contrary, it was an unexpected success, a
triumph even.
“I still can’t believe we did it”, Lidija panted. Her breath slipped out her nostrils like
wisps of grey smoke. “God, that was good. It was good, right?”
“It was fucking sick”, Robin said and turned to me. His eyes were asking: And what
about you? What did you think?”
I said: “It was different.”
Lidija gave me a gentle punch in the stomach. “I knew you’d like it. And to think you
were going to leave.”
A question had echoed inside me ever since she called me back and now I came right
out with it. “Did you plan this, Lidija? You did, didn’t you? For me to watch?”
She stopped. “My god, what do you think of me? That I’m some kind of pervert? I
just wanted you there. We’re always together, you and me, and when we were in there it just
felt completely wrong for you to leave like that.”
We ambled across the school yard. A pale moon gleamed behind a sooty veil of
cloud. A pleasant silence fell; the only sound was the gravel crunching under our feet.
Inwardly, I repeated Lidija’s word, let them shoot little arrows of friendship straight
into my chest: “We’re always together, you and me…”
*
That night I went straight home and watched porn.
Porn. It suddenly strikes me that I’ve only mentioned my interest in pornography in
passing. I’ll start from the beginning.
I discovered porn in earnest roughly when people usually discover it, which is to say
at some point during those still innocent middle school years, and I found it where people
normally found it back then, which is to say on the pay channels we had access to for a few
days while switching cable providers. My mini-TV was new, as was my habit of spending
sleepless nights furtively zapping my way through the channels. The unexpected
gynaecological perspective was as viscerally arresting to me as a live surgery would have
been. I remember everything sort of from above, how I felt so violently nauseated I put a
hand on my stomach, stumbled backwards with the remote in my hand and collapsed on the
bed, turning the TV off. And there I sat, practically traumatised, vowing silently never to
have anything to do with porn ever again.
And I didn’t, not for several years at least. The next time, I was fourteen and the
images on the television hit me like, how do I put it, like my first time with a guy failed to. I
guess I must have been working through my first experience since I had it, or at least that’s
how I have come to interpret the fact that this time, the scenes slid down me as gently and
effortlessly as a milkshake. I watched and touched myself, and the next day I did it again.
The whole thing was so comfortable, like finding a new friend, the perfect friend who
was always around but never demanded anything of me. I had my first orgasm in front of the
mini-TV; it was a clip showing an attractive brunette, an American, being taken from behind
next to a swimming pool. “Stuff me”, she howled and it was at the sound of those words I first
felt that warm pleasure. I was given my first computer and my viewing moved online; I
developed habits (a daily evening session, just before bedtime) and preferences (group sex,
49
the more, the merrier). And that’s all pornography was to me, a small, private interest that
made me feel good. Not a grand interest, I was perfectly clear on that, but then I’ve never
considered myself a grand person.
But now I hadn’t watched porn for a while. It had become more sporadic lately
because my computer was old and played up with increasing frequency (blue screens
appearing for no good reason, banner ads for casinos everywhere). Tonight, I didn’t care, my
computer could hiss and sputter as much as it wanted I just kept hitting the enter key,
searching for clips with positions like the one Lidija and Robin had been in in the changing
room. The computer resisted; I kept hammering away. In the end, I had to settle for a
completely conventional clip: a man and a woman, a drab bedroom. But it was enough, there
were days when just about anything did the trick and this was one of them.
I closed my eyes, leaning back. And then I came, like so many times before, behind
my locked door, prone on the bed, slightly bowlegged, with my laptop on my chest.
*
The events in the changing room ended up lifting our spirits in a way I don’t think either of
us had anticipated. The next day, Lidija brought a whole bottle of vodka – we drank half of it
straight away and laughed in raucous union. What the hell had we done last night? Had Lidija
really fucked in our old school? With me watching? We were so damaged! Then the alcohol
kicked in and the conclusion ended up being something like: Fuck it; fuck it, us, everything.
How one thing led to another I don’t really know, but for the first time in several
weeks we returned to our old discussions about the future – but with a newfound confidence.
We were young now, but wouldn’t stay that way for much longer, we agreed. How long
before the ardours of adult life kicked in? Two years? Five? In five years’ time, we would in
all likeliness both be stuck in draughty studio flats, bickering with boyfriends who didn’t love
us. We’d be working, obviously. But, we declared, not yet.
Not yet. That was the whole point. Because right at that moment, we were in that
magical gap between young and grown up where no decisions need to be made. Where the
task was actually quite the opposite, to explore and just try your ideas. Others might go
abroad at this stage of their lives, backpacking through Asia, buying a one-way ticket to
Australia, taking a job on some godforsaken fruit farm. We did none of that. Travelling was
for the unimaginative, people who were unable to journey in their minds. But that’s what we
were going to do, let go, make ourselves susceptible to life and its possibilities. Say yes to
everything. I don’t know how Lidija came up with all this stuff, but the logic was hers and
she expounded on it, accompanied by my feeble, drunken applause. “Cutting loose”, I said, “I
like it.”
That afternoon we chugged the rest of the vodka, which knocked us out completely.
Lidija could barely stand upright; I threw up in a bin. We hollered and laughed and stumbled
back to Aspudden to the sound of our own shrieking. It was a familiar existence – and also a
brand new one. Did we believe it? I don’t think we did, either one of us, But sometimes that’s
beside the point; you have an idea and then the rest just happens.
“Say yes to everything”, we repeated in unison when we met up the next day. “Say
yes to everything” became a rallying cry on which to start and end every day.
And that’s how we ran into Mimmi again.
*
When winter descended on Aspudden that year, it was unusual, worlds removed from the
shiny Christmas card motifs we’d all been longing for. No storms to make the windows rattle
50
pleasantly in the night and no crooked snowmen in people’s yards – because there was no
snow, none at all. But the temperature had plummeted to ten frigid degrees below zero.
We skidded about on icy back streets, drinking spirits neat to keep warm. “This is one
fucked up winter”, Lidija grumbled and exhaled dejectedly into her fists. She claimed the
cold made her joints ache, that it restricted her airways, making her jumpy and shaky. “Listen
to this”, she’d say and demonstrate the miserable state of her health by exhaling, which made
her airways whine like a full orchestra. It sounded nasty and I thought she should go see a
doctor but she wouldn’t hear of it: “They can’t do anything about this. It’s the weather, it’s
this arctic fucking weather.”
Lidija’s fragile health forced us to curtail our outings. We always did anyway around
this time of year, but now we’d been down to Vinterviken for the very last time. We
wandered back and forth between Guido’s and the supermarket, every now and then slipping
down into the underground. Staying in central Aspudden for a change was nice, but also a bit
unsettling, since there was an inherent risk of running into people you knew, which is to say
teachers and class mates, some guy you fucked years ago, who in your mind had been erased
from the face of the Earth, but who suddenly pops up right in front of you, living, breathing
and less attractive than ever, yet another depressing reminder of your lack of success in this
world. And it was obviously just a matter of time before we stumbled into Mimmi and her
entourage.
It happened on a day as freezingly cold as the previous ones; we were on our way
through the town centre in search of something to eat. Lidija spotted them first. It was a
group of ten or twelve people; they were sitting on the plinth supporting the fat lady statue,
leaning against her plump legs. A comical sight: with the statues big, proud breasts dangling
ominously above them, they looked like Lilliputians around Gulliver. Despite the cold, they
seemed noticeably relaxed; they hollered and laughed and had even laid out a bit of a spread:
pizza boxes, soft drinks and plastic cutlery. It looked like a picnic, in the icy depths of winter.
Lidija gave them the evils. “What the fuck is this? Do they think they own Aspudden
now?”
She’d barely got the words out when a voice that sounded like Mimmi’s flitted by like
a whisper on the wind: “Hey, you!” And then louder: “Hey, hey!”
Panicking, we stiffly trudged on. But it was too late. Out of the corner of my eye, I
could see a dark arm waving frantically. “Over here!”
Lidija stopped first. “What do we do now?”
Indeed, what were we going to do now?
There was only one thing to do.
*
“I thought it was you!”
The welcome Mimmi gave us was so spontaneous and bubbly an outsider could never
have guessed at the tension that normally existed between us. That voice! Up close it was
surreal, small but very penetrating. “Great, really, just so great” she chirped, grabbing Lidija
and hugging her warmly.
Lidija stared at me, her eyes wide. It was rare for anyone to get through the many
walls she’d erected, but when it happened she always seemed utterly defenceless. “Yeah”,
she said stiffly, “awesome”.
Then it was my turn. I’d never been this close to Mimmi’s pale, powdered face: big,
springy curls, cheeks ruddy as a cherubs. She smelled strongly of smoke and perfume. “Well,
hey there you”, she said and looked me straight in the eye.
I just stood there, unable to form a normal sentence.
51
“Hi”, I stuttered, “hey, hi.”
Thankfully, the most eccentric members of her posse were absent that day. Just young
people, no alcoholics or weirdos that might grab you and subject you to protracted, frenzied
conspiracy theories about the Palme murder. The girls wore sparkly tinsel wreaths in their
hair, as did the guys, as a closer look confirmed. They looked like an old poker group,
capable of sticking with their habits under any circumstances, and when the exhausting
process of greeting each and every one was over with, they returned to their conversations
under a dense cloud of cigarette smoke.
“Hey, come on, don’t just stand there!” Mimmi was making room for us on either side
of her. Napkins and packets of cigarettes went flying in every direction. “There, is this okay?
You can fit now, right?”
We sat down. And why not? I thought. It might even be nice to be accepted by these
people for a while?
For a few bemused seconds, we looked at each other in silence.
“So, what’s up?” Lidija said finally.
“Can’t you tell?” Mimmi opened her jacket and white fabric spilled out. “We’re
celebrating Lucia, of course.”
But Lidija wasn’t impressed. “Right”, she said and shrugged. “I never got Lucia.
Where I’m from we don’t do stuff like that.” She was still uncomfortable and not planning on
sticking around.
Mimmi took no notice of her attitude. “Me neither, really”, she said and slipped back
into the rambling patter of a small town hair dresser, “god no”, and “absolutely not”. Her
high-pitched voice bounced between syllables with delightful ease. “But the thing is that I
hate to miss an excuse to party.”
Having said that, she leaned forward and started rummaging through a bag on the
ground. Two plastic wine glasses appeared and were passed back through the group. She
signalled to someone that we needed drinks. The glasses were returned, filled to brim with a
brown, fizzy liquid.
Lidija peered into her glass. “What is this?” she said.
Mimmi emitted a tinkling little laugh. “Oh Lidija, you look like you think I’m trying
to poison you! It’s a Christmas mixer, our special brew, you might say. Cognac and
Christmas soda I think it is. Danny, it’s cognac and Christmas soda in these, right? You just
have to try it; you’re going to love it, I promise.”
But Lidija was still Lidija and she hated being told what to do. Only when the
conversation shifted away from us – something about a party in the very near future – did she
gingerly put the glass to her lips. Then her face melted into a shy little smile. The way to
Lidija’s heart was through alcohol, always through alcohol. She gave Mimmi a happy nod:
“This is great. Fucking awesome, actually.”
Then followed a few minutes of wonderful, drunken togetherness. We laughed at
nothing at all, or possibly at the fact that we –we – were sitting together as though it were
something we always did, and then we laughed at our laughter and finally at the redemption
inherent in intoxication: that nothing matters; when it comes down to it, nothing matters.
At the edge of my blurry field of vision, I could see Mimmi handling her disciples.
She whispered something to one of the girls, put a gentle hand on another. Mimmi was a clan
leader completely devoid of repressive impulses. It was almost too good to be true – Mimmi
was too good to be true. Why on earth had we designated her our arch enemy? It was as
artificial and silly as when you reject the boy you actually have crush on in middle school.
Lidija burst out laughing at something I’d failed to catch. And just like that her glass
was empty.
52
“Well now, you managed to get it down after all, huh?” Mimmi grinned. “Top up?”
And then she got up and declared loudly: “Alright, I think we should have a toast for Lidija
and…”
At this point I was beside myself at the thought of her pronouncing my name with the
same naturalness she had just said Lidija’s. But she didn’t. Instead she turned to me. “God,
I’m suddenly not sure”, she whispered. “It’s Lollo, right?”
This happened to me a lot, that Lidija was Lidija and I was no one. It was such a
given, I barely thought about it anymore. But I didn’t want Mimmi to think of me as Lollosomeone-or-the-other.
“Lollo”, I repeated when she’d sat back down next to me. I was already drunk and
getting drunker with every move I made; suddenly I’d grabbed her whole hand. “Lollo, okay,
don’t you forget it!”
She laughed. “I knew”, she said. And then she leaned into me. “It’s just that I prefer
to spend my days in a bit of a drunken state. It makes things go right out of my head…” The
corners of her mouth had climbed up into a big, friendly expression and she put her arm
around me.
Oh Mimmi! Could we stay like this forever? Could she at least make some attempt to
make us stay?
In fact, she was about to.
“I’m having a party at my house tomorrow”, she said when we were about to leave.
“We’re celebrating Rebecka’s eighteenth birthday. Eighteen, it’s a big one, and Becky
deserves all the attention we can give her.” She winked at the only brunette in the group, a
girl with tinsel wrapped round her thin jacket, who reminded me how long it had been since I
went to high school – as far as I was concerned she could easily have been sixteen or
fourteen. “We start at ten and go until morning. It’s going to be amazing. Why don’t you drop
by?”
Lidija and I looked at each other. Here we were; we’d just let Mimmi feed us, which
was strange enough. Were we really going to her party as well?
Then it hit us, I think at the same time: Cutting loose. Saying yes. To everything.
“We might”, I heard Lidija mumble behind me, and then: “Why not?”
It sounded so good, I thought, so bright and optimistic, to say yes, just like that.
“Yeah”, I said, my voice happy, drunk. “Why not?”
*
What the fuck happened back there? Lidija said when we’d sobered up later that night.
In hindsight, I had to admit our encounter with Mimmi had been pretty strange.
“I don’t know”, I said. “Maybe Mimmi’s not a complete retard after all.”
Lidija sighed. “Yes, she is. And I still hate her.” It sounded like a capitulation and it
was: “But I really want to go to that party. Don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“So, are we going?”
“Alright.”
*
The next day, Lidija had a text. She pulled her phone out of her coat pocket and held up the
display up so I could see, an obstinate look on her face. It was a message that despite its
brevity bore the unmistakable mark of Mimmi:
53
Amaliagatan 23, around ten. Come! XXX
“Amaliagatan”, I said, “that’s in the middle of Aspudden.”
“Do you reckon it’s Mimmi’s flat?
“That’s what she said, right? That the party was at her house?”
Lidija’s brow furrowed. “I bet it’s hers. And I bet it’s fucking swanky too.”
54
10
Amaliagatan was an old cobbled crescent just north of the town centre. To say it was an
exclusive area might be an exaggeration, but it definitely counted among Aspudden’s better
addresses. Because the street formed part of the circuit mum had ushered grandma round
during her last years, I knew it was really quite pretty in the summer, with picturesque, leafy
gravel paths and cats padding across garden furniture. But it was winter now and the black
gravel paths slithered through sodden yards, and the trees reached out of the ground like
shiny, futuristic talons.
She was on the top floor, the fourth.
“I told you”, Lidija hissed when we came face to face with the little name tag above
the mail slot. “Mimmi’s a fucking snob.”
Lidija had gone back and forth on the party, but she always came back to how much
she needed this, that her whole being craved a party, a big party with people and music: “Do
you know when I last listened to music? I’ve no idea! I’m a musician! I need music!” But on
her way up the stairs, she’d suddenly been overcome with doubt, stopped and launched into a
long, sulky rant about Mimmi and house parties and her own defective party outfit; it had
required considerable effort on my part to get her moving.
“Now she was prodding the name tag aggressively: “I mean, come on, what is this?
Gold?”
The tag was, in fact, a dainty little brass thing, not the stained piece of paper we’d
probably both expected on Mimmi’s front door, if, indeed, she even had one. “M.
ANDERBERG” it read. Anderberg. This banal surname immediately took on regal overtones
in my mind. Mimmi Anderberg, queen of Aspudden, queen of everything… I rang the bell
before Lidija could object again.
“Oh my – honoured guests!” She was wearing some kind of 1920s getup: a short,
dark cocktail dress with fringe, a silk headband around her head, a feather by her ear. To our
immense surprise, two giant dogs gambolled around her feet. “This, by the way, is Claus and
Beatrix!”
It was a couple of black bulldogs, one slightly smaller than the other, but both
remarkably large. They yipped loudly and neither one of us made any attempt to pet them.
“I prefer slightly smaller dogs too”, Mimmi laughed. “I mean usually. But I get paid
to look after these two. Not a lot, granted, but then again, it’s not a lot of work, almost none,
as a matter of fact.” She kneeled down and grabbed hold of the bigger dog, pressing her face
against its forehead and rubbing its ears lovingly. “They just need lots of kisses every now
and then.”
She pulled us further into the flat. I’d rarely been more excited about seeing
someone’s home. Overflowing clothes racks everywhere? Graffiti on the walls? As it turned
out, it was an eminently normal place; equal parts neat and messy. The overall theme was
vaguely romantic, but only in as much as it was clear a woman lived here. Mustard yellow
cupboards in the kitchen, laminate flooring and potted plants. The fridge was home to a
colony of witty magnets, and above the miniscule folding table which served as a dining
table, Mimmi had pinned a large, grainy, black and white postcard to the wall with a needle.
The postcard caught both our eyes.
55
“Edith Piaf”, Mimmi offered, “did I ever tell you I love Edith Piaf? Non, je ne regrette
rien. That’s my motto. Do you have a motto?” She stuck her head in the food cupboard. “You
have to have a motto, preferably more than one. Principles, you know, a few guidelines. The
way I see it, this world requires it.”
Lidija and I stood there without saying a word. What can you say to someone like
Mimmi? The logical thing seemed to be to simply listen.
She’d been feeling under the weather earlier in the day, she was saying now; she’d
almost considered cancelling the whole shindig. “But then it cleared up, just like that. Lucky,
huh? Now we get to spend some proper time together.”
Lidija picked up a biro from the kitchen counter. “You live here by yourself, don’t
you?”
Mimmi nodded. “This is mine, all mine. And thank god. I’m a loner. You might not
believe me, but I am. Not all the time, obviously, but I have this need to withdraw from the
world sometimes. People sometimes find that hard to handle; they think I’m avoiding them or
something. They couldn’t be more wrong. I love people, I just don’t love them all the time, if
you know what I mean. You can’t be sociable all the time, it’s not good for you. Not for
anyone, I reckon.”
Lidija and I silently reflected on this rush of information. Mimmi, a loner? Well, why
not? I thought. Overly sociable people often have a serious need for solitude, that much I’ve
learnt from Looking Deeper, a recurring pop psychology segment on one of the morning
shows.
Judging from Lidija’s facial expression, however, she quickly sorted this confession
under what she termed “bullshit”. “Really”, she said, “You like being on your own? Just you
and no one else?”
“Sure. Sitting here, drinking my coffee, reading the morning paper, knowing the
whole day belongs to me; is there anything better? Well, partying, possibly. And maybe
ecstasy.” Mimmi smiled. “But it’s been so long since I did E; clearly I don’t find it that
amazing. That kind of thing can be so overrated.”
Having located what she’d been looking for, a box of dog kibble, she poured the
brown pellets into two bowls sitting on a stained newspaper. The bulldogs hurled themselves
at the food in a panting heap.
“Poor things”, she sighed, “always hungry. I don’t think their owner feeds them at all.
Look, they’re positively famished.”
In the living room, we met the rest of the guests, pretty much the same people as
yesterday. They were clustered in smaller groups, foraging among bags of crisps and cans of
beer. A small, open laptop covered in stickers was playing pop music, but not very loudly. It
was a simple get-together, no more, no less.
Just as we were about to sit down, Mimmi placed an intervening palm between
Lidija’s shoulder blades. “Not yet”, she said. “Come on, there’s something I want to show
you.”
A ritual of initiation?
This is significant, I thought. It has to be.
At the back of the flat, behind a planter full of big, droopy leaves, was a small
bedroom. A low bed, heaps of cushions. A bedside lamp cast a pallid light on a pile of
jumbled things on the nightstand: coins and broken mobile phones, notes with names and
numbers jotted on them. In a free space, separate from the rest, were two small, white bundles
wrapped in plastic.
“You see” – she lowered her voice – “I prepared treats for you. Just go ahead. If you
feel like it, of course.”
56
“This is for us?” Lidija said, sounding, to my ears, surprisingly experienced. “All of
it?”
“Think of it as a welcome gift. It’s nothing special. Just something to make you feel
extra good. Sometimes you have to feel that little bit extra good, right?” She dug around her
dress pocket, pulling out a lighter. “By the way, you might need one of these”, she said and
handed it to me.
It was an old-fashioned thing, with a lid, enamelled surfaces and everything.
“Nice lighter”, I said. “Unusual.”
“Isn’t it? My Nan gave it to me. I think it’s from, like, World War II. I love it; I love
old stuff.”
The doorbell rang. In the kitchen, the dogs reacted with agitated barking and wild
scrabbling across the linoleum. Someone was calling Mimmi.
She sighed. “Hostess duties, suck-o, really, you never have time to talk to anyone. But
you’ll be alright on your own now, won’t you? Right? This works, right?” She backed out of
the room. “Just holler if you need anything. Okay? Just holler.”
And then we were alone. My eyes were getting used to the dark. Wallpaper roses and
posters emerged: Maria Callas and Frida Kahlo, a perfume ad with a naked woman crawling
across a cliff in front of an ocean.
“So many women”, Lidija said. “Do you think Mimmi’s a lesbian or something?”
Mimmi, gay?
“How should I know?” I replied. “Who cares?”
“I bet she’s a lesbian and she’s planning to drug and rape us. Drug us with this.”
She’d turned to look at the tiny parcels. “Can you even believe it?” she whispered excitedly.
“All of this…”
“What is it? I said, hearing how naïve I sounded. “Is it drugs or what?”
She snorted derisively. “It’s weed, obviously.”
Lidija was no more experienced with narcotics than me, which is to say, not at all.
And yet, she’d somehow acquired all this knowledge about drugs that I lacked; she knew all
their names and what they did.
I sat down on the bed, unscrewing the top of the vodka mixer we’d brought with us.
“What”, I said, taking a big swig. “Are you saying we’re going to smoke it?” We’d never
smoked up before – the mere thought of lighting up now made me anxious. “I thought we
didn’t… or?”
“Sure we are.” Lidija was already tearing open the plastic. “Because tonight”, she
said, “I’m having fun. Tonight I’m doing whatever the fuck I want.”
The vodka was radiating pleasantly through my chest. I suddenly felt instantly and
wonderfully plastered and threw myself backwards onto the bed. I could make out a ceiling
lamp in the dark. It was wrapped in some kind of gauze. My head was spinning faster and
faster; the gauze seemed to be drawing nearer.
And then I remembered: Say yes to everything.
“Okay”, I said, my eyes still on the ceiling lamp, “So let’s do it then.”
*
A few hours later, we were both lying prone on the bed, Lidija high as a kite, me moderately
intoxicated. I’ve never learnt to inhale properly, a shortcoming that caused so many coughing
fits that night, I could barely talk anymore. But Lidija’s state was rubbing off on me and I
was laughing at myself and her, at everything and nothing. If I had been tense before, I
definitely wasn’t anymore. It was a good night, I thought, the best I’d had in a long time.
57
But then we decided to make our way out to the living room. An idiotic move – never
leave a fully functional pre-party, as Mimmi would teach me much later. The place was
deserted. A couple was curled up in an armchair, making out and sleeping in each other’s
arms by turns. On the floor by the sofa stood an opened bottle of beer. Lidija picked it up and
took a few sips.
“I told you”, she muttered. “We should never have come here.”
It was that empty, desolate feeling you only ever get at parties. Is there any better way
of validating one’s sense of insignificance? Who were we anyway, Lidija and I? What set us
apart from someone like – I don’t know where the name came from – Nicole? Nothing, my
head replied, throbbing, nothing at all. Any other day, it would have been an obvious, almost
enjoyable epiphany, but right there and then, it was utterly unbearable.
The party, it turned out, had moved to the balcony. The dogs were there too, and
judging from the sounds – laughter and barking – the conversation revolved around them.
“Out there”, I said.
“Fine, let’s go have a look”, Lidija hissed. “I want to know what’s so bloody funny.”
*
“Dogs, dogs, dogs”, Lidija growled as we stepped out onto the balcony, “that’s a lot of talk
about a couple of fucking dogs.”
And then – and this was more spectacular than it may sound – she grabbed the snout
of the bigger of the two bulldogs, the one called Claus, baring its teeth. It froze; its eyes
glowed red and terrified.
“This”, she continued, “is not a dog. In Serbia, where I’m from, we have dogs, real,
wild dogs. Get it? They run around in the streets; they have loads of diseases. The bite people.
One bite” – she jabbed her index finger into one of the younger girls’ stomach, making her
take a step back – “and you’d be dead. Finito. But this little dork”, she let go of the dog,
which yelped and flattened itself against the floor, “doesn’t scare anyone, not even a baby.”
There was complete silence. Everyone just stared. A guy in oversized glasses gaped at
her like a fish.
Someone has to say something, I thought. But who? Lidija piped up again:
“You think you’re something, with your parties and your clothes and shit. You think
you’re so cool. But do you know what’s cool? Really cool.”
I suddenly realised what was about to happen. No, Lidija, don’t do it. Don’t say it.
“Fucking outdoors. Where you can get caught, where anyone can walk by and see
you.”
Still, no one said anything. I stared at my socks. Tube socks, Intersport logo. Why was
I wearing such awful socks? This evening, what an excruciating turn it had taken. Could
someone just get us out of there?
“Cosy”, a velvety voice said behind us.
It was Mimmi, standing in the doorway with a drink in each hand. She had pulled a
large knitted jumper over her cocktail dress and her feather headband had ended up a bit
askew, but she still looked awake, rudely so as a matter of fact, and now she was studying us
curiously.
“Tell me more”, she said, without a trace of irony. “Why did you do it? How was it?”
“Ehm, because…” Mimmi’s presence immediately put Lidija on the back foot.
“Because I was fed up, I guess. I’m not sure. I just needed to do something. Try something
new. Take a risk, sort of.”
58
“Interesting, really. I like the idea. And I get it.” Mimmi took a seat on the threshold,
handing Lidija one of the drinks and raising the other to her lips. “You have to try this.
There’s banana liqueur in it. I love anything with banana in it.”
Cigarettes were stubbed out against the railing, someone started cuddling with the
dogs. But just as I thought the party would break up into loose cliques again, Mimmi made a
loud gurgling sound with her straw to attract everyone’s attention.
“I do stuff like that sometimes too”, she said. “The other day, I went down on a guy
on the underground.”
Lidija looked up from her drink. “You did what?”
“You heard me. I sucked a guy off on the underground. I was actually wearing a
bunny costume. Well, so was he. We’d been to this party, a costume party, kind of. Everyone
was looking at us, someone even took pictures. Turns out, it was a lot fun.” She smiled, a
small, inscrutable semi-smile. “And when I’m bored I webcam.”
Lidija gaped at her. So did I, I’m guessing.
“Really?” Lidija asked. “You do porn?
“I wouldn’t call it porn exactly. It’s more like a kind of… project. But sure. I take my
clothes off, certainly. And not just me.” She looked around. “Becky and Saga both know a
thing or two about this, don’t you?”
Becky, the birthday girl, and a blonde standing next to her, they appeared to be best
friends, nodded tentatively.
“You’re serious?” Lidija said. “So you’re saying you all…”
“Not all of us. Me, Becky, Saga.”
“But you’re into that?”
“Absolutely.”
A sharp gust of wind hit the balcony. It juddered so violently it felt like it was going
to come loose.
“Goodness”, Mimmi said. “Let’s go inside, okay? We’re about to be blown away out
here.”
*
“Did you know Mimmi does webcamming?” Lidija asked while we were walking home.
It was almost three. My head was heavy with intoxication and exhaustion.
“No”, I replied truthfully, “I had no idea.”
“Naked on the internet. It’s fucking sick. Don’t you think it’s sick?”
“Sure”, I said, “it’s certainly not normal.”
“Sick”, she muttered, “so sick.”
*
Now you’re wondering whether we already knew what we were going to do. We didn’t. But,
as Lidija would point out much later: How many ways are there for girls to rebel in this
world? The conversation on the balcony was as instantly and obviously tantalising as a
rumour that someone in your class had lost their virginity. How long had she been doing it
for? Why? We asked ourselves. But it would be another few days before we talked about it in
earnest.
We were sitting, deflated, on the bike rack outside the underground station. We’d had
nothing to drink all day. The sky was like a lid over Aspudden, impenetrable and white like
cod flesh. A few stray snowflakes hovered anxiously above our heads. I was hungry and
frantically chewed a piece of gum that had lost all its flavour.
59
“Robin called me yesterday”, Lidija said suddenly. “Wanted to hook up and stuff.”
A gum bubble grew out of my mouth; I let it pop all over my face. “Okay”, I said.
“And?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I mean, I like him but… no. Maybe later.
That’s what I told him anyway. Maybe later, like in the spring or something. But not right
now.”
“Not right now.” It was the kind of precocious platitude that would normally come
out of Emma when she was about to dump yet another boyfriend who didn’t measure up. And
if Lidija had been Emma, she would now have launched into a ridiculous harangue about her
unique need for peace and quiet, solitude and reflection. But Lidija wasn’t Emma and the
word “reflection” didn’t even exist in her vocabulary:
“I tried to explain it to him. That I like him and that, that it’s nothing to do with him
but more to do with the timing. It’s just not the time. You and me, we’re busy with other
things, right?” Her glossy hair – dyed starkly red and black at the moment – shone like a
glowing sphere against the drab backdrop. She fixed me intently. “Lollo, I’ve been thinking
about what Mimmi told us. You know, about how she webcams. It’s really messed up, but at
the same time… isn’t it also kind of cool?”
I stiffened. The thought had crossed my mind, but clearly not seriously, because
hearing it said out loud made me cold and uneasy.
“I don’t know”, I said. “Why would it be?”
“Because”, she said slowly, “it just is.” And then she said: “I wonder if we’ll webcam
eventually. I mean, maybe that’s where all this is leading?”
“Cut it out”, I said. “Why would we do that? What has that got to do with us?”
She heaved a sigh. “You’re not listening. I said I’ve been thinking about it, that’s all.
It’s not really all that weird that something like that makes you think, is it? Here we are,
drifting around with no money while all Mimmi has to do is flash her tits… She probably
makes a lot of money. How else could she afford that flat and all those parties? It’s pretty
obvious when you think about it.” She lowered her voice. “Lollo, I think Mimmi’s rich.
Filthy rich.”
I had nothing to say to that. I rarely got annoyed with Lidija, but this, being drawn
into outright fantasies, was more than I was prepared to tolerate.
But she wouldn’t let up.
“Isn’t that what people dream about? Getting bloody rich?”
“I don’t.”
“No?” Her mouth was stuck in a bewildered oval shape. “Come on, you must have –“
“No”, I said, more harshly than intended. “I actually never have.”
“Weird”, she said. “You and I are so alike and still –“
“We’re not all that alike”, I blurted out, “are we, really?”
I was stunned by my tone. Where was this coming from?
We stared at each other. Here we were, frozen in one of those sober moments when
we were reminded that we didn’t understand each other, that no matter how much we liked
one another, there was a kind of rift between us, a gap we couldn’t bridge without alcohol.
There was no telling what it was, other than that it was something fundamental we didn’t
share.
I think those moments were harder on Lidija than on me. At least she was always in a
hurry to snap us out of them:
“Shit, I’m so cold”, she exclaimed and pulled out her Marlboro Lights. She waved
toward the town centre. “Let’s bounce.”
*
60
I drifted home slowly that evening. Christmas lights everywhere, heavy sleet in the air. I felt
empty and tired. Why was I so tired? I shouldn’t be, I thought. I was still young; I was going
somewhere… I’d repeated these old mantras of ours several times when I almost slipped on a
patch of ice.
That’s when I spotted her, under Guido’s sodden awning. It was Mimmi, smoking, all
by herself. A somehow ominous scene – when I think back, I did see it, even then. Her white
hair blazed in the gloom. She looked like a cartoon character, tiny with quick, distinct
movements.
I was almost sucked into her sparkly, glowing aura. “Mimmi”, I hollered, “hey!”
She raised a hand, as though something was blinding her. She didn’t see me straight
away. “Oh, hi”, she said, mid-gasp, “it’s you.”
From close up, her smile looked less genuine than when I’d seen her last, almost
forced. She was sober and seemed tense. Her hair lay in a messy plait on her shoulder. A
sober and turned-out Mimmi, a Mimmi I’d never seen before.
She gave me a hug, but it was less warm than before. “It’s good to see you again”, she
said. “You good?”
“Yeah, fine. Thanks for inviting us the other night, by the way. We had a great time.”
I came off like an idiot, clingy and desperate.
She took a final drag on her cigarette and dropped it on the ground. “Right? We
should do it again some time.”
In the dusk, I could make out a backpack and a full carrier bag. And then I realised
someone was sitting by the wall, squatting close to the ground. It was Nicole.
“You don’t know each other, do you?” Mimmi said. She perked up a little, studying
us both with amused curiosity.
She loved this, I was starting to realise, being the hub, the centre of things.
“No”, I said, “I don’t think we do.”
“Nicki”, she said again, after introducing us. “Best Nicki ever, that’s this one.”
Nicole got up with the heavy, lethargic movements of a sloth, as though she’d just
woken up. She was slightly taller than me, which surprised me – her fragile air made it
difficult to imagine her having a physical body of any kind. She pushed a strand of hair
behind her ear, straightened her jacket. That jacket, it really bothered me. It was even filthier
now, the fur trim looked like roadkill.
“Hi”, she said and held out her hand. Faint voice, it barely reached me.
I took her hand and squeezed it – harder than I’d planned to. “Hi”, I said, “nice to
meet you.
She didn’t seem to recognise me and for a few seconds we stared at each other like
only strangers can. She looked unnaturally tired, ill even. Some form of reddish rash was
creeping up her cheeks; in the dark it looked blueish and nasty. I had a sudden impulse to ask
her how she was doing – but stopped myself.
“So, what are you up to then?” I asked. “Going somewhere?”
She shook her head. “We’re just out.”
Then silence fell. Nicole slid back down the wall; Mimmi looked away. It was as
though I’d interrupted something, something going down right here, right now, something
that was none of my business.
I kicked the asphalt. “Pretty cold out, huh?” I ventured. “When it’s this cold, it’s
probably sensible to just stay indoors –“
The whirring of a vibrating mobile interrupted me. It was Mimmi’s phone. She pulled
it out of her pocket and glanced at the display. “We’re waiting for someone, kind of”, she
said. Her bearing was straight and authoritative in the darkness. “We have some stuff to take
61
care of, that’s all.” For all its vagueness, she made this information sound crystal clear. “How
about you? Where you off to?”
“Nowhere. I’ve been hanging out with Lidija. On my way home now.” I shoved my
hands in my pockets. “She’s off to Serbia soon, by the way, Lidjia, I mean. She’ll be gone
over Christmas.”
Only now did Mimmi look up from her phone. “God, lucky her”, she exclaimed and
looked sincere too. “That’s such a good idea. To just take off. What do you say, Nicki? We
should do that some time, I reckon, just leave…”
That set her off on a short soliloquy. Something about India and Goa, Anjuna Beach –
Nicole seemed to know about these places too, but they were unknown to me. “Sand between
our toes, a bit of shisha, that would be just the ticket”, Mimmi said dreamily before turning to
me again. “Tell Lidija hi from me, okay?”
Heavy, wet flakes had begun to fall. A new, gloomy silence descended. We had
nothing to say. A few days ago, we’d been best friends and now we didn’t have a thing to say
to each other. It was absurd. And at the same time I was thinking, I don’t know why, that it
was so typical, a given even. I pushed my hands deeper into my pockets. The lining was
about to give out, bits of fraying fabric were coming loose at my touch. Nicole’s jacket might
be the ugliest in Aspudden, but mine really wasn’t much better. It was ugly and stained,
unfashionable, too, it seemed to me when I considered it properly.
Something, stress or maybe unease, washed over me. I wanted to get away, get home,
go anywhere, so long as I didn’t have to stay here.
“See you later”, I said and started walking.
“Wait.” Mimmi had already fished out another cigarette and put it between her lips.
“We’re having a party Friday”, she said and took a deep, death-defying drag. “Just a little
Christmas thing, nothing special.” Thick coils of smoke wound their way out into the night.
“You’re invited. Lidija too, obviously.”
For a moment, it felt infinitely tempting to return to Mimmi’s world. Talk and laugh,
drink copiously. I needed alcohol, I realised, more than ever. But then I shuddered so
violently my teeth chattered and suddenly the idea of another party at Mimmi’s house seemed
a distinctly hazardous prospect.
“Thanks”, I called.” Maybe another time. I don’t know what’s up with me, but I’m so
fucking cold. I think maybe I’m coming down with something.”
62
11
When I got home, I ran into Emma in the hallway. She was pacing around in little circles,
noticeably stressed. A different world, a bright and colourful contrast to the darkness I’d just
left. It took me a while to understand what was going on.
“The Christmas Show?” I said.
“It’s the final touches, everything has to work now.” She was wearing a white silk suit
that looked like it had been sewn on to her body. It made her look very grown up. “Brand
new”, she puffed. “Isn’t it awesome?”
“It’s tight.”
Her brow furrowed. “Of course it is. What did you think I was going to wear? A
sack?”
I hung up my jacket, my ugly jacket – compared to Emma’s immaculate look it
seemed hideous, barely good enough to give charity. It made me think about Nicole again.
“Hey”, I heard myself say”, did you ever get hold of that girl?”
Emma had stopped in front of the hall mirror, studying herself while sucking her
tummy in. “What? Who?”
“Nicole. Did you get hold of her?”
She turned around. “Oh, that. Yeah, she turned up eventually. But by then it was too
late. I fired her, obviously.”
“Fired?” I laughed drily. “What, you’re running a little business now?”
“What do you want me to call it then? I told her she can’t miss rehearsal for, like, a
whole month and then expect to jump right back in again. Sorry, sweetie, I said, that’s not
how it works.”
“Was she upset?”
I was asking so many questions, as though this was something that genuinely mattered
to me. Did it? Either way, Emma didn’t seem to notice:
“Eh, upset?” She stuck her hand in a box of hairclips that was sitting on the dresser by
the mirror. “She didn’t start crying, if that’s what you mean. She got it, I think. She’s a total
social services case, but she’s not dumb or anything. She’s not like Sandy. My god, I’ve so
had enough of her.”
And then she went off on a lengthy tangent, griping about some poor new kid who
apparently was called “Sandy”. Reading between the lines, it was clear that this was someone
who had the looks, but whose small town, naïve mentality kept getting people into trouble.
“She’s dumb as sand. Did I tell you she lent Kim seven hundred kronor? Kim? She’s
never going to see that money again. And who do you think is going to have to listen to her
whinge about it for the rest of the year?” She turned to me. “Moi, obviously”, she said with a
mouth full of hairpins.
“Sandy”, I said, “what kind of name is that? Why do all your friends have weird
names?”
But she wasn’t listening. Instead she took the hairpins out of her mouth, one by one,
and stuck them into her big, dark blonde mane, while enumerating specific examples of
Sandy’s failings. Something about a party where she’d started crying after being told she’d
just downed a cup of moonshine. “Said she was going to go blind. You see? That’s what
she’s like, she’ll believe anything. Actually, it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s sitting around
63
right now, waiting for, like, Santa or something.” She let a strand of hair tumble down her
chest and turned. “Does this look okay? Or should I wear it down instead?”
“How should I know?”
“Just say what you think. Does this work or not?”
I looked her up and down and tried to think of something appropriate to say. She
looked good as always, radiant skin and all that stuff. But looking more closely she seemed
tired, unusually tired even.
“You look fine, I guess”, I said.
“Fine? Just fine? I’m kind of trying to – “
“Great”, I broke in, “you look great.”
Only then did I realise she was wearing new shoes. They were beige and enormous
and the weirdest shoes I’d ever seen in my life. “But hey, what’s going on there?”
“What?”
“Your shoes? They look insane.”
“It’s UGGs. I bought them yesterday. Nice, huh? I’m wearing them for the show.”
“Come on, you can’t be serious. You can’t wear those. They look like beaver feet.”
I laughed, delighted at my apt simile, but Emma just snorted derisively: “You’re
clueless. Everyone wears UGGs in L.A. They’re the world’s best shoes.”
Alright, fine then. I had nothing to add so I did a lap around the flat. The kitchen was
still dark.
“Emma”, I shouted, “where’s mum?”
“What?”
“Mum, where is she?”
She came and stood in the doorway, undoing her hair, letting it tumble down her
shoulders. “The shops”, she said. And then she smiled – not one of her fake, sugary smiles
but a genuine one: “She’s making tacos tonight.”
*
“Oh, you’re both here!” mum exclaimed when she got home. She let four bursting shopping
bags thud onto the hallway floor. “And I’m making tacos; it’s perfect!”
And it was, at least at first. Mum fried the mince; Emma and I chopped iceberg lettuce
and tomatoes and then we ate for hours in front of the TV, where programmes came and went
without anyone paying attention.
Emma described the Christmas Show, which had grown in both scope and
complexity. Smoke machines had been added – as well as a live iguana: “It’s Vanessa’s
brother’s. It’s so adorable; its name is Nisse but we call it Baby.” The lizard had quickly
become central to proceedings. It was going to wear a vest and perform a bunch of advanced
tricks; they’d built some sort of maze. “It keeps getting quicker and quicker so we have to
expand the course all the time. It’s smart, you know, not like some dumb dog or anything.”
This amused mum, who marvelled and laughed; I nodded even though I was barely
listening. I downed another glass of Fanta, burped resoundingly and sunk deeper into the
sofa. A warm and happy feeling was spreading through me. When had I last sat here? I
should do this more often, I thought. What was I doing out there? I had a home and a family –
and it was cold and unpleasant outside. It was incomprehensible really. My life as a
delinquent, it was so silly, so artificial.
But then mum shattered the peace:
“We’re doing Christmas at Viveca’s this year.”
64
Viveca is mum’s older sister. We’d been celebrating Christmas with her family in
their house in Tyresö for the last few years, not long enough yet to make it an irretrievably
entrenched tradition.
Actually, it had apparently been just long enough now.
“We thought we’d do that from now on”, mum said. “It’s been working out so great,
hasn’t it? Haven’t we had a really lovely time?”
I heaved an audible sigh. I didn’t have a lot of time for Viveca and I’d never done
much to hide it. “I don’t know if I’d agree with that”, I said.
But mum ignored me: “She’s already started planning it, she told me. She asked me to
say that she’s so looking forward to spoiling you.”
That phrase was classic Viveca. Like we were children, something that had been
dumped on her doorstep even though she was the one insisting, since our home wasn’t good
enough for her. (Listen, Eva, don’t you think it might get really cramped?” She’d replied
when mum had offered to play hostess a couple of years ago.)
Then Emma said: “Can’t we stay here instead? Just the three of us?”
Mum stared at her as though she’d just proposed the most inconceivable idea ever.
“Here? No, that wouldn’t be Christmas, would it? Just the three of us sitting around here?”
“What?” Emma sat up straighter, tossing her hair, offended. “What’s wrong with that?
It’s perfectly normal. Like tonight, we’re having a great time here, right?”
Her words struck home quietly, like the crystal clear arguments they were. Just look at
us! We were fine on our own, better than ever. We could even talk to each other, which was
more than could be said for Viveca and her family.
For a while, I thought we were off the hook, that we were actually going to celebrate
Christmas by ourselves this year – which would be a first. But then mum gathered up our
plates, got to her feet and said in a dry, measured tone, as though she’d not heard a word of
what had just been said:
“Well, but we’ve been invited. And you know how happy it makes Viveca when you
visit.”
*
I threw myself on my bed that night, insanely heavy and tired. It was all the food and fizzy
drinks, I guess, but when I woke up the next morning I was still just as dazed. I fumbled
around for my clothes and could barely get them on. And when I met Lidija later in the day
and she ambushed me with a minor lecture, I just wanted to go back home.
“We have to do it”, she said. “Webcam, I want to try it. I’m sure now.” She was
balancing a hotdog tray in one hand. “So fucking hungry”, she grunted. “No breakfast at
home.”
I’d been bracing for this moment; somehow I’d seen it coming.
I just stared at her impassively. “You’re kidding?” I said, even though I knew she
wasn’t.
“Of course I’m not. The thing is, I checked out Mimmi’s blog.”
“I thought you didn’t like it.”
“I don’t. But listen, I had to check this out. And you know what, she was telling the
truth. She really did go down on that guy. And she was wearing a fucking bunny suit. Big
ears, pink fur, the works. It was super weird, I mean, they were like the weirdest pictures I’ve
ever seen, I reckon.”
I sighed.
“I’m not exaggerating.”
65
“Let me see if I’ve got this right”, I said. “So, just because Mimmi does this, you want
to try it too? Then go ahead. But don’t drag me into it.”
She glared at me. Her eyes were cutting, hurt. “Why would you say that? We’re best
friends, aren’t we? We do stuff together, right?”
“But this? What the fuck even is webcamming anyway? Taking your clothes off while
some old dude jacks off to it?”
“It doesn’t have to be like that. There’s nothing to say –“
“Lidija”, I broke in, “Are you serious? You think this is a good idea? For real?”
I was impressed by myself. I sounded firm but reasonable, like a guidance counsellor
dismissing a student’s ill-advised plans for the future.
We were quiet.
“Just say it”, she said suddenly. “You think I’m stupid.”
“What?”
“Don’t you think I’ve noticed? It’s so bloody obvious. And that’s why –“
“Lidija. Come on.
She held her hand up in reproach. “I’m not saying you think I’m a retard or anything.
But not really smart either. Not like you.”
Did I think of her as less intelligent than me? I probably did, but when the statement
was presented to me it sounded ludicrous. Besides, smart was a word I tried to avoid. Smart
was the kind of thing Evelina strove to be, smart was smug and tedious.
“I genuinely have no idea what you’re on about”, I said, “none whatsoever.”
She jabbed her plastic fork into her hotdog, balled up the tray and threw the whole
thing in a bin. “I’m sorry”, she said. “I’m not feeling so good. It’s the hot dog; it was
disgusting. I’m never eating a fucking hotdog again.”
*
The rest of the week went by as if in a vacuum. Lidija kept working me, arguing that the best
thing we could get up to right now was to try webcamming. Maybe we’d get rich? Famous?
At first, I rejected her as coolly as before, then increasingly indifferently, then not at all. What
I did do was drink. I drank more and more, beer and bag-in-boxes and sickening liqueurs
Lidija stole from Ana. And I slept, more than anything, I slept, heavily and for too long. One
morning mum appeared in the doorway to my room. This place is a mess, she declared; when
was I going to give it a good Christmas clean? I got up, closed the door and went back to
sleep.
And outside, winter was still refusing to settle in properly.
*
It was an acute and all-encompassing ennui; I have never experienced anything like it before
or after. I was tired all the time, dragged myself out and back home again in a leaden, rigid
state, like I was on drugs. That evening, when I closed my eyes, a jumble of images from my
life passed before them: Rocky Point and Lidija in her fur coat, the hotdog stand in the
square, even the snacks shelf in the supermarket in extreme, depressing detail. And all of it
seemed tedious, hideous almost. I didn’t want this anymore. It felt like I didn’t want
anything.
Lidija, on the other hand, was exhibiting a certain degree of serenity. This was an
equilibrium we were, funnily enough, usually able to maintain: when one of us was bent out
of shape, the other pulled herself together. While I shuffled around, increasingly apathetic,
66
she just kept blowing her nose and prattling on, completely carefree. And they days passed.
Inexplicably, somehow they did.
“How weird is it that it’s almost Christmas?”
Lidija’s voice rang out in the silence. It was afternoon, we were standing around,
staring at the sky. It was warmer out now, but no prettier: a bleak, rainy colour palette, the air
heavy with moisture.
“What are you doing this year?” She asked.
I shrugged. “Nothing much. We’re going to Viveca’s as usual. I’ll be sitting around,
being bored.”
“Poor you.”
“Whatever. It’s just one day.”
“It’s a fucking long day.”
And then we shared a slightly ragged, hollow laugh. We were like an old couple, I
realised, harrowed and worn down but still in one piece. Was that it, that after everything, we
were going to survive? That whatever happened, we would end up here, like we always had?
It was a comforting thought.
Then Lidija said: “By the way, have you checked out Mimmi’s blog yet?”
I hadn’t. Ever since our encounter outside Guido’s, the thought of Mimmi had made
me uneasy. Something told me I’d do better to stay away. I should explain that to Lidija, tell
her about the strange eeriness that had emanated from Mimmi and Nicole that night. But I
was too tired, I was too tired to do anything those days.
“No”, I said, “not yet.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Just haven’t felt like it.”
“Hey, don’t tell me you’re feeling sorry for Mimmi?” Lidija sounded sulkier now.
“Do you?”
“Why should I? I barely know her.”
“But I can tell something’s up.”
“Lidija, it’s nothing.”
I raised my eyes to the sky again. A fine drizzle was falling now. A thick, grey arc
had spread across the blanket of clouds, making it look like a face with a big, sinister grin.
This was a horrible winter, I thought. Worst winter ever.
*
That evening I got my diary out. Once upon a time, I’d been a diligent diarist but that was a
long time ago now. It was a black notebook – I used to get them off mum who pinched them
from work – and the most recent entry was dated April. I skimmed a few pages, which were
all crammed with detailed but entirely trivial accounts of my everyday life: Lidija and I had
eaten at Guido’s (“delicious”), I had bought a new pair of trainers (“nice”).
Now I turned to a blank page. Thin pages, virginal and untouched. With a thick
marker, I wrote in big letter: “So fucking fed up with it. All of it!”
*
Darkness fell over Aspudden; the one thing to suggest we were nearing the end of December.
The question of webcamming didn’t come up again and I was grateful for it. The week before
Christmas centred on Lidija’s preparations for her trip to Belgrade. She needed to renew her
passport; she needed to buy presents. As for the presents, she had it all planned out, perfume
67
for her Nan, sweets and kitchen stuff for her parents. “What do you reckon”, she
contemplated over the phone, “is it okay to bring a fucking knife on the plane?”
And suddenly we were standing outside her building, saying goodbye, a procedure we
had repeated so many times it was beginning to feel as traditional as Christmas itself. It was a
grim, windy day, just like the ones that had preceded it and we stood there staring at each
other, our hands shoved deep into our pockets.
“My plane’s at two”, she muttered, “and I haven’t even packed yet.”
I checked my phone. It was ten already.
“Then you’re cutting it a bit close”, I said.
She sighed. “As usual, you mean.” She pulled a lighter from her pocket, played with
its tiny blue flame; whoosh-whoosh. The lighter disappeared again. “Right”, she said. “That’s
that.”
Lidija often turned a tad dramatic in these situations, as though we were lovers who’d
never see one another again.
“I’ll see you again soon, Lidija.”
“You sure of that?”
“Of course I am. As long as you’re not planning to move to Belgrade or whatever.”
She stared at me solemnly. “Lollo, you’re my best friend. Come with me. I mean it; it
would be so great. I want you to meet my Nan. She’s awesome. You’d love her, I know you
would.”
“Maybe some other time.” Travelling didn’t seem all that appealing to me, least of all
travelling to a country I could barely place on a map.
“You’re mad at me.”
“I’m not mad.”
“Yes, you are. You’re mad at me because of the webcam thing, because I wouldn’t
fucking shut up about it and because –“
“Lidija, forget it. I’m not mad. I’ve never been mad.”
And I wasn’t, at least not anymore. But I was glad she was leaving. I wanted to be
alone, just lie in bed, watch TV. It was this tiredness. Sometimes it was so overwhelming; it
washed over me with such force. Was I coming down with something? Was I getting old? I
thought a lot about that. But I didn’t feel like talking about it.
“You know what I’m like, I get these ideas.” She smiled bravely. “But as long as
we’re friends –“
“We’re friends, Lidija.”
“If you say so.”
A strong, whirling gust hit us from behind and we shuddered simultaneously.
“Go on”, I said, “we’re about to freeze to death here.”
She looked at me. Then she gave me a quick hug I didn’t quite have time to react to
and opened the door.
*
I hadn’t had time to eat anything yet so I decided to go straight back home. Skipping
breakfast normally didn’t bother me, but today my stomach was howling. Every step I took
on the short walk home sapped my strength a little more, and by the time I stuck my key in
the door, I had a full-blown headache.
The lights were on inside. In the kitchen I came across Emma, wearing nothing but a
dressing gown, reading the paper over a bowl of cereal.
“You’re here?” I said. “What are you doing here?”
68
“What does it look like?” She shoved in a mouthful of cereal and chewed
demonstratively. “Eating.”
“But it’s like…” I dug out my phone. “It’s half ten. Shouldn’t you be at school?”
“I’m on Christmas break.” She still pretended to be absorbed by the article in front of
her, a cluttered shopping guide to some city or the other.
Christmas break? That sounded so strange. Had I been sitting there like that too,
between terms, temporarily liberated from the drudgery of history exams and group projects?
It felt odd, comical even, when I tried to imagine it.
“Right”, I said. “Feel good?”
“I guess.” But nothing in her voice suggested she cared either way. “Better than going
to school anyway.”
My tummy growled. “God, I’m so bloody hungry”, I said and opened the fridge door.
While I dug through cheese rinds and milk cartons it hit me: the Christmas Show. If autumn
term was over, the Christmas Show must have taken place.
“Oh, by the way, how did things turn out with the –“
“The day before yesterday.”
No matter how vapid I found it, I always felt a bit guilty about not going. “Sorry I
didn’t come”, I said. “I was going to but –“
“It doesn’t matter anyway.”
“What? It didn’t go well or something?”
She shrugged. “It went okay, I guess. There was too much smoke in a few of the
scenes, you couldn’t see anything. And Sandy forgot a few of her lines – obviously. I knew
she didn’t belong. Everyone knew that. But she just had to be in it, what could I do?” She
sighed. “She ruins everything. I hate her.”
“Shame”, I said. “After you worked so hard on it.”
“Whatever.” She stirred her cereal listlessly. “I’m just fed up. It’ll be good to be rid of
all this next year. Graduate, get away from all the idiots. Get away from Sandy.” She turned
the page: more shopping, shoes for less than five hundred kronor.
“Hey”, she said, “I need some alone time. Okay?”
69
12
And then came Christmas Eve, a day I’d always used to love, which now filled me with
dread. That morning, I ran into mum, who was sitting on the sofa with the phone pressed to
her ear. “It’s Viveca”, she mouthed. “She says hi!”
I nodded indifferently. Snatches of their conversation drifted through the bathroom
wall. We were supposed to be there by one. We didn’t have to bring anything at all. At this
point mum objected but Viveca insisted. “Nothing”, mum confirmed, “okay, agreed,
nothing.” Viveca always insisted. The mere thought of her, her wrinkly face and that shrill
voice that seemed to obliterate everyone else’s, depressed me. For a while I considered
lingering in the bathroom, feigning some sort of digestive distress. But the sound of mum’s
happy holler stopped me: “Hey, you heard that, right? Viveca sends her love!”
I hadn’t always disliked Viveca. Once upon a time, she’d been a harmless kind of
woman, you might even have called her kind. But as is so often the case with gentle people,
life had not been kind to her. Viveca’s story contained all the classic components of female
tragedy: involuntary childlessness, break-ups, men who swore they loved her but turned out
to have mistresses all over town. Emma and I, who were little back then and sometimes
served as substitutes for the children Viveca didn’t have, couldn’t understand why she was so
upset – after all, she had us? “It’s not the same”, mum explained. “Viveca wants children of
her own so very badly, you see.” I still didn’t understand. There was something about Viveca
and her anxiety, her vacant eyes and restless fingers that constantly moved across her thighs,
that was incomprehensible.
And then everything changed, overnight. It happened after she gave up, when her
breakdowns were so frequent mum routinely had to pick her up at the psychiatric emergency
department, when she’d be openly intoxicated, popping up at our front door with stained
clothes and tousled hair and so on – it was at that time, among the bales of loo roll in the
supermarket – we’d been regaled with the specific details a thousand times – that “he just
appeared” (her words). She met Bengt, a considerably older man, a teacher, the corduroywearing kind. They got married, bought a house in Old Tyresö and at the age of forty-four,
Viveca gave birth to a son, Theo.
“I thought that ship had sailed”, ran the opening line of this success story, which
Viveca frequently shared with us, and the emphasis of which was constantly, to put it mildly,
moved further into the future. It had been difficult before, but now she had it all: a husband
and a child and a house – even mullioned windows. That last bit she’d add like a witty
punchline to wrap up the narrative. “Even mullioned windows”, she’d say and look
mischievous, as though she’d told a rude joke. In short, Viveca had changed.
I’m not sure when exactly I decided to dislike her. It crept up on me and I think it had
to do with having to relate to the story of her triumph. It was boring; it was exhausting. It was
as though she were trying to create a distance between us, between our life in Aspudden and
their much more affluent existence. And each time we got together, we’d sunk further down
while they’d climbed. I couldn’t point to anything specific, but there was something sinister
and polished about them and then we came and crashed their party, children of a broken
home, the almost destitute. At least that’s how she made us feel, pitiable, somehow. She
straightened our shoes in the hall; she might say that we looked “tired”, or even “haggard”,
seemingly without any inkling that it might be construed as offensive. Sometimes, when she
70
thought no one was looking, I had caught her studying Emma and me with a tender but
paternalistic look, kind of the way a farmer studies his cattle. And this kept happening until
one day, I realised I didn’t like Viveca.
Didn’t like either one of them, I should say. It was impossible to find anything good
to say about Bengt, so dry and aloof, even if you tried. He was a man, he had an income and
these were the two critical reasons for why he existed in Viveca’s life; there was no reason to
pretend otherwise.
I didn’t like their house either – or The House, as it was known, as though we were
dealing with a minor estate. In fact, it was nothing more than a new build of that dreary, nondescript variety that companies trick young families into buying at a steep cost, with promises
of sunny playgrounds, a congenial community feel and gardens full of flowers. After all these
years, there was still no garden to speak of, just a scrawny shrubbery that came up to my
waist and a patch of soil with some slender, pale reeds growing out of it. And still we had to
talk about it, talk about the garden. There were bulbs and pest exterminations and flowers
which were discussed as though they were living pets. “Let’s go have a look at the
hydrangeas”, Viveca would exclaim while we were still in the hallway, before swiftly
escorting us to the only colourful element of the garden, a small shrub with tousled leaves
(“Hydrangeas”, Emma always hissed in my ear, “I hate hydrangeas. I want roses!”).
But the worst of the lot was the son, Theo.
He was twelve by now, a horrid little thing with freckles and over-sized teeth. Eagerly
cheered on by both his parents, he had started behaving like the lord of the manor before he
left preschool. By now, things had spun wildly out of control. He had not one room but two,
divided according to some ridiculous themes I refused to learn more about. He played chess,
he was in a drama group. He only ever watched foreign documentaries on TV. (Imagine that
– my son keeps up with international politics!”)
Both parents exhibited a demented interest in everything this awful human being did.
Naturally, the discussions about which high school programme he should apply for were
already in full swing. They were leaning toward a science programme. “But it’s a shame
about the humanities”, as Viveca put it, “we’d prefer it if he didn’t have to limit himself at
all.”
*
Bengt picked us up in the car from the bus terminal behind Tyresö town centre. Yet another
thing I felt Viveca made too much of; they had a car and we didn’t. “But we have our car”,
she shrieked when the subject of Christmas logistics came up, almost as though the car was a
new and amazing possibility that had suddenly appeared, even though it had been around as
long as Bengt had. It was a tiny white Opel; it was pretty junky and reminded me of our old
Volvo – the sight of it always made inexplicably depressed. I didn’t miss dad and certainly
didn’t miss our car, so why did I hate getting into this one, with its hard seats, knowing that
this wasn’t our car? I don’t know. There’s a lot I just don’t know.
Aside from the obligatory pleasantries, Bengt said nothing. Viveca was looking
forward to seeing us, she really was, and apparently she had worked extra hard in the kitchen
this year. The last part he stated only reluctantly; like so many men, Bengt exhibited a
compulsive contempt of women’s work. Mum ventured a quick question about the food.
“Fish something or the other”, came the reply, offered without a smile. That was actually the
worst thing about him, his lack of emotion. Never any facial expressions to speak of, just a
rigid plaster mask of a face that never really reacted to anything.
“B-e-n-g-t”, Emma mouthed from her side of the backseat. “s-o f-u-c-k-i-n-g w-e-i-rd.” We’d barely said a word to each other all day, but Viveca and Bengt was one of the few
71
topics where we were in full agreement. She opened her eyes wide, trying not to laugh. “R-ig-h-t? D-o-d-g-y?”
He was. If Bengt had once been one wooden, middle-aged man among others, he’d
now become more distant than ever, practically a ghost. Nothing worked and nothing got to
him anymore. The best thing you could do was avoid him.
And that’s what mum did. The Q&A was over. She buckled her seatbelt, did the
obligatory display of gratitude for the lift and then kept quiet.
“It’s my pleasure”, he mumbled from behind the steering wheel.
And then we were all quiet.
We rolled through the deserted town centre. The red lettering – TYRESÖ C – hovered
against an anaemic sky. It wasn’t evening yet, but it no longer looked like day either. Not a
soul in sight. The traffic lights were all green and the car moved forward almost unnaturally
smoothly. Bengt’s large hands rested lightly on the wheel. I wondered why he didn’t turn the
radio on, but then I realised that was exactly the kind of thing Bengt would never do. Life
was supposed to be small and neat, not a party.
That was probably the unspoken principle that had led Viveca and Bengt out here.
Was there a more boring place than Tyresö? “Tyresö”, as Lidija had put it once, “sounds like
a shithole.” And it was. Even though I’d gone past it at least fifty times, the area still felt just
as unfamiliar. No outstanding features, no deserted parks or old brick buildings – just straight
road upon straight road until the houses grew sparser and you found yourself in a flat, open
landscape. I hated all the goddamn roundabouts which seemed to be constantly proliferating
and I hated all the hideous place names – “Öringe”, “Nytorp”, “Brevik” – which kept
popping up to inform us how far away they were. But more than anything, I hated the
detached houses. Boring and non-descript and at this time of year comically lifeless, they
were scattered in square formations in bleak fields. None of the smoky, rich shades of
Aspudden out here, nothing but this. Ugly, a voice whispered inside me, ugly,ugly,ugly. Over
the years, my dislike of Tyresö had grown completely implacable. Tyresö was enemy
territory, the symbol of everything I hated, everything I feared. The yellow exteriors, the
shingle-imitation tin roofs, the neat recycling stations – I felt like a force was emanating from
them, an invisible force that threatened to suck me in and destroy me if I let my eyes linger.
We passed a trampoline on a wet lawn.
“You have to ask yourself”, Bengt said, “why they let it sit outside.”
Mum jumped, surprised by this sudden attempt at conversation. “Of course, yes”, she
managed. “It’s bound to, well… rust, right?”
The Opel weaved between rows of houses. It was always impossible to predict which
way was the right one. Rain was hitting the windscreen. This didn’t look like Christmas and it
certainly didn’t feel like it. But then, just as I spotted Viveca, it kind of did, somehow.
She was standing outside on the “veranda”, which is what she called the ridiculous
birdhouse that was stuck onto the front of their house. I saw her hapless silhouette through
the fogged-up window before she spotted me – arms waving, those glasses that always
slipped down. She looked nothing like mum; it was important to me to confirm that every
time we met.
“Why, hello”, she shrieked when Bengt had open the car door, and her glasses took
their first slip down the ridge of her nose. “My god, this weather!” and “Let me grab that for
you” (nervous fingers twitched at mum’s purse as if it were a heavy suitcase). She pulled
open the front door, which set off a loud jingling of bells – which always scared the life out
of me. Her glasses had now slipped down so far they looked like reading glasses. “Come in,
come in”, she panted and then: “Rain on Christmas Eve, who’s ever heard of such a thing.”
72
There was the struggle with winter coats for which there wasn’t really space and the
gravelly puddles I just had to step in every time. Everything was such hard work, I thought,
so laborious. And for what?
“I told Bengt weeks ago”, Viveca, who was already busy reorganising our coats,
puffed. “Didn’t I, darling? Didn’t I tell you it would be a green Christmas this year? The way
this winter keeps stalling and stalling. But rain, I’d never have thought that. It’s the
greenhouse effect, there’s so much talk about that, isn’t there? Don’t you think it’s the
greenhouse effect, darling?”
Bengt didn’t respond. Bengt rarely responded to Viveca these days. I assume there
must have been a time when he treated her differently, maybe even lovingly, but if that were
the case, that behaviour was no longer forthcoming. At best, they reprised mum and dad’s old
dramas: She made an effort; he pulled away. The occasional exchange of information. But
more often than not, this was all there was, fake companionship, two goldfish swimming side
by side day in and day out without knowing why. Didn’t she want more? More than this
stereotypical woman’s fate? If she did, she never let on. Never a hint that she realised life
could be different. Just the constant smiling – and the liberal use of the word “darling”, as
though the word, in and of itself, could mask the fact that she and Bengt lived completely
parallel lives.
A series of sharp lights greeted us in the living room. It was a pair of traditional
advent candle holders, one in each window. Aside from them, nothing betrayed that it was
Christmas. “I don’t like cluttering up the surfaces”, Viveca’d say about the austere interior,
and every time I thought about how much I disliked these surfaces, the open plan and the
white walls, the bookshelf that apart from a complete set of encyclopaedias was almost
empty. I was normally drawn to encyclopaedias and the knowledge they guarded, a leftover
reaction from my childhood, I suppose. But not these. They just looked compulsory and sad,
standing in a neat line next to a heavy glass object.
“The place looks lovely.” Mum looked around the room, admiring some new
additions, a procedure as predictable as Viveca’s response, which was to fumble excitedly
with her slippery glasses.
“Do you really think so?” Viveca was never slow to accept a compliment and turn it
into more: “Do you really think the breakfront works in here?”
Rain pattered against the windows. We stood in the middle of the floor in a neat little
group.
“Rain on Christmas Eve. It’s a bit disappointing, it has to be said.” Viveca stared
sceptically out the window. Old, despondent Viveca, the Viveca we saw less and less of –
and who instantly brightened into the new, cheerful version: “But we’ll have to take it in our
stride. Don’t you think? We can do that, right? ”Actually”, she said, “the white Christmas
thing is mostly for the children. But you’re all grown up now.” At this point she turned to me.
“You don’t care about those things? Do you? I don’t think Theo has even noticed –“
“Speaking of which”, mum broke in. “Theo? Is he not here?”
“Upstairs.” Viveca glanced up at the second floor. “He’s got so much on, you know.”
*
We were served glögg while we waited for the food to be ready. I poured myself a liberal
helping – mild inebriation might make the evening semi-tolerable, I reasoned. But just as I
stuck my nose into the sweet, mulled wine fumes, Viveca informed us the glögg was alcoholfree.
“I think it’s such a shame people can’t socialise without alcohol these days”, she said
in a voice quivering with vexation. “People are always drinking. Wine with lunch, wine with
73
dinner, and those bag-in-boxes, don’t even get me started. It’s just so wrong, all this drinking.
Don’t you think so?”
Mum nodded to herself, surprised, I guessed, that Viveca, with her well-documented
background of alcohol abuse, was taking such an uncompromising stand.
“The alcohol-free versions taste just as good, don’t you think?” Viveca droned on, “if
not better even.” She looked at mum, demanding agreement.
Mum took a sip. “Yes”, she said, “maybe you’re right.”
I disliked the way mum behaved around Viveca, small and easily impressed, always
eager to keep up with the pitches Viveca had clearly honed by frequent repetition. I suspected
she considered her submissiveness entirely deliberate, a symptom of her caring for a sister
who’d not had an easy life. If that were the case, though, it was roleplaying that had long ago
stagnated into cliché. Viveca yakked on, mum did her best to keep up.
“Much better”, she conceded, squeezing her mug, “it actually is.”
And thus began the usual charades. Which is to say that Viveca was about to subject
mum to an endless stream of nonsense. There were the recent family matters (purchases,
upcoming holidays), there were the things she’d seen on TV (“This new TV chef, I actually
find him a bit peculiar”). I was always pressganged into the role of unwilling audience to
these exchanges. The way it went was this: Viveca finished each round of drivel by looking
at mum and then at me. Not that I had to participate, but I had to be there, to lend the
conversation a gravitas it did’t possess. And I couldn’t get away; as soon as I let my eyes
stray, Viveca responded with tiny, almost imperceptible interruptions in order to force my
attention back to the topic at hand.
Emma had an easier time than I did; she was expected to stay close, but with her
inseparable partner, the mobile phone, she was, in practice, at liberty to disengage.
“Theo”, Viveca announced – family matters had increasingly become simply Theo’s
matters – has just decided to tackle the great philosophers. Would you believe it, my boy.”
And then she took a deep breath and was off: something about self-study, something about a
“philosophy club” (They meet up to philosophise). “He understand all that stuff, the ancient
Greeks. All that stuff that’s incomprehensible to people like me… Just now it was Plato, I
think – wasn’t it Plato, darling?” (Bengt grunted something affirmative from his armchair –
Theo was one of the few subjects they still conversed about.)
“That’s so great for him, how exciting”, said mum, who not even at gun point would
have dared to object to their helicopter parenting.
Viveca was on her way to the kitchen to put the final touches to dinner. “That’s what I
think. How could someone as scatter-brained as me get such a talented son, I mean, really?”
Isn’t it funny? I think… Oh, you know what, this fish soups smells delightful!”
Through the clatter of her cooking came more boasts about Theo: advanced group
projects in school; a steam engine he was building (Steam engine, oh my”, mum exclaimed,
“that sounds like something from my school days…”) But more than anything, it was chatter
about the film – Theo was in the middle of making a short film.
“It’s crazy the things they can do nowadays, you wouldn’t believe. He does
everything, shoots, edits the cuts…” Viveca returned from the kitchen. “Is that what it’s
called, darling, the cuts? I mean it’s not like it used to be, when you actually got your scissors
out, is it?” (No reaction from the armchair this time.)
Just then, Theo appeared from upstairs. Hands in his pockets, the air of a world-weary
child star.
“Ooh, there you are”, Viveca squealed. “You know, we were just talking about you.
Now you have to tell us everything, about the film and… I was just explaining to Eva that –“
74
But Theo didn’t reply. Instead he went straight to the kitchen. Viveca was hard on his
heels. The fridge door opened and closed. Muffled reproaches: “Theo honey, don’t snack
now, dinner’s almost ready…”
I put my mug down and sat staring at the TV, which was switched off. We’d used to
watch the traditional Donald Duck clip show before dinner, but since Theo had announced
that the programme was “for babies”, this year, we all just sat around the blank TV screen.
That was not the only new feature though, and Viveca was just about to make a big hoopla
about the other. There would be no traditional Christmas meal this year:
“It’s just so heavy. I actually find all that meat repulsive.”
“Repulsive” was one of the many words Viveca had added to her vocabulary after
meeting Bengt – others included “significant”, “chic”, and “rustic”. “Doesn’t this dresser
have rustic charm?” she might say and turn to mum, ready to extract praise.
But now it was the fish soup we were all supposed to admire: a slightly terrifying,
orange concoction.
“Let’s see then”, she said in a strained voice, ushering us round the table with an
invisible hand, “how this measures up to a Christmas ham.”
“It certainly smells wonderful,” mum assured her. “How exciting.”
“Do you really think so? I’ve used every trick in the book, of course, but you still
never know, food is just like… Theo, Theo sweetie, would you pass the bread basket
around?”
Further compliments from mum, something about a previous dish that had also been
amazing, Viveca’s coy coquetry. This was an unusually tedious Christmas, I thought to
myself. And it was about to get worse.
“Damn it, this chair, “Emma whimpered next to me, “I’m aching all over”. She’d put
her phone away, which always gave her acute-onset abstinence. “What is that?” She
surreptitiously poked at a small ceramic bowl that had landed in front of her.
“This?” I asked and held it up to her face.
She flinched as though it’d been filled with bugs. “My god”, she gasped. “They’re not
expecting me to eat that, are they?”
It was aioli, one of Viveca’s specialties, at least according to herself. “Nothing lifts a
dish like aioli”, she had declared during the Easter dinner that had seen the first appearance of
the sauce. Since then, it was a standing feature of these get-togethers.
Emma stirred the white goop. “It’s nothing but fat”, she whimpered and turned her
face away. “Get it away.”
At the other end of the table, Viveca was regaling mum with a new set of topics. The
new, flat mammoth villa, apparently built with money from lottery winnings, had we seen it
on our way over? Wasn’t it tacky? Just so garish? And there were plans for a new residential
area, a project she objected to. Everyone in Tyresö did, she claimed. “No one understands
why they have to come here and ruin things. Can’t they build somewhere else? There are so
many more suitable places. Like Länna, that’s just one big forest. Isn’t that right, Bengt?
Länna, wouldn’t that be much more appropriate?”
Suddenly it was as if a switch had been flipped and everything was taking place in a
vacuum. It was a trick I’d learnt during the last monotonous years of school: being present
and still absent. I could see mouths moving, Viveca gesticulating, Emma, who with thinly
veiled agony ladled a tiny splash of soup into her bowl.
And while I sat there, pushing orange gloop, which Lidija would no doubt have
dismissed as “bullshit”, around, I was suddenly overcome with longing. I hadn’t thought
about Lidija since she left, but now I thought about her all the more. What might she be up to
on a day like this? Was she at some family gathering, suffering through similar trials? I
couldn’t imagine her like this, small and compliant, nothing but a prop in someone else’s
75
show. Lidija, my Lidija, she would have caused a scene, said something appropriately
disparaging about the food just because it amused her. I didn’t do that. Why didn’t I ever do
that?
Viveca’s voice cut through my musings. I looked up and noticed her agitation.
“I was saying”, she said, “that I want to hear what’s new with you. You know, what
you’re up to these days, how things are going? Well, I hope?”
I was all too familiar with this moment. I don’t know whether Viveca was genuinely
interested in me, or whether it was just because Emma wouldn’t tolerate intrusions into her
privacy, but at some point during our get-togethers, my life, never hers, had to be scrutinised.
“Me?” A nervous giggle bubbled up inside me. Should I tell her the truth? That I still
didn’t have a job? I stared into my fish soup, put my spoon down. Why should I say anything
at all? How was it her business? I said: “It’s the usual stuff. Nothing special.”
But my statement didn’t possess the kind of finality I’d been going for and it had no
effect on Viveca. She peered at me unpleasantly from behind her glasses. She wasn’t going to
give up so easily. “You young people”, she said. “Always so secretive. So, do you have a
boyfriend? You must, surely?”
Back then, there were two ways of getting to me. The work thing was the first, and the
less effective. Admittedly, I did feel uncomfortable talking about my lack of employment, but
not like Lidija, who had to respond to everything with rude jokes and such. This, on the other
hand, categorising me as a girl among girls, with a boyfriend – it drove me up the wall.
I shook my head. “Unfortunately not”, I said. “No boyfriend, nothing.”
“No? Not at all? Really?” She’d tilted her head to the side and there was an unctuous
glint in her eye. I hated that look. It reminded me of someone and this someone filled me with
unease. If only I could…
But that’s as far as we got before Theo started screaming bloody murder at the other
end of the table. “Mum!” he bellowed. “I said no clams!”
Viveca ran to his side, studied his bowl and fished a clam out with her hands. “Oh
dear, I thought I’d got them all out”, she squealed and dashed toward the kitchen. “Oh dear,
oh dear!”
The table was in uproar. Bengt – who was the only one who could still even remotely
control Theo – was trying to talk him down: “Clams, you see Theo, are part of a classic
bouillabaisse.”
I took a deep breath. I was, I realised, incredibly relieved that I was the furthest thing
from anyone’s mind.
Then Emma gave me a shove. “Oh my god”, she said, “do you think he’s going to
cry?”
76
13
After dinner, Emma and I ended up on the sofas in front of the TV. The dinner drama had
brought us ever so slightly closer. We were chatting casually; Emma had, astoundingly, put
her phone away. The TV was showing a film, some action flick: Angelina Jolie, car chases
and gleaming weapons. I found it pretty unbearable but Emma was into it and she was in the
middle of telling me how paradoxical it was that she of all people liked action movies when
Theo appeared.
Without acknowledging us, he vanished behind the bookshelves on some fake errand.
His presence puzzled me and I couldn’t help glancing in his direction. During all the years
we’d known each other, he’d never once willingly spent any time in the same room as me,
much less addressed me. Emma was the only one he occasionally showed any interest in.
And suddenly, he was standing behind the sofa she was lounging in.
“Do you want to come upstairs and watch this film I’ve made?” he said.
She barely reacted. “No”, she said without taking her eyes off the TV, a reply that was
so deliberately rude I felt myself stiffen.
“No?” Theo brushed a strand of hair from his eyes. He seemed confident he’d
misheard her. “What do you mean, no?”
She heaved a sigh. “No, I don’t want to. Because I’m busy.”
It wasn’t a common occurrence, but sometimes I just loved Emma for her astounding
arrogance. When she was in that mood, even Lidija seemed well-mannered by comparison.
Theo stared at her. “Doing what, if you don’t mind me asking?”
A contrived yawn; she couldn’t even be bothered to follow it through. “Well”, she
said and wriggled deeper into the sofa. She let her eyes roam round the room once and come
to rest on the bowl of walnuts on the coffee table. “I was about to crack some nuts.”
A malicious grin tugged at the corners of my mouth and I was only partly able to hide
it. A tense silence enveloped the room. On the screen, the film was reaching its climax:
Angelina with a gun under her chin; explosions; a few well-chosen words to the villain, a
bald man I recognised but whose name I couldn’t remember.
“I love Angelina”, Emma said in a content, sleepy voice, as though the subject of
Theo’s film was already closed and forgotten. “Don’t you think she’s the most wonderful
woman in the world?” She distractedly picked through the nuts in the bowl. She managed to
crack one of them and put the contents in her mouth. “Nuts, pretty gross when you think
about it; kind of taste like pure fat”, she added and wrinkled her nose. She turned to Theo:
“You’re supposed to be smart. Are nuts full of fat or what? Don’t tell me I’m shoving my
face with pure fat?”
He dug around his pockets, did some small, spasmodic knee bends. Was he going to
respond and risk another insult?
“Indeed, nuts do contain a certain amount of fat”, he said. “Now, as far as walnuts go,
specifically –“
“So, fat”, Emma interrupted. She pushed the bowl away. “That’s all I needed to
know.”
This was getting to be painful. The credits were rolling on the TV now. I picked up
the remote and pretended to be absorbed by its many functions.
“Yeah?” Emma said to Theo. “Did you want something else?”
77
He was completely crushed. I felt sorry for him and, at the same time, not sorry at all;
at the same time it was as though I grew a little with every blow he was dealt. When he
finally shuffled off, a triumphant laugh found its way through my chest.
“He’s so disgusting”, Emma hissed across the table. “Have you noticed how that little
brat is hitting on me?”
“Mm”, I said, “something like that anyway.”
“So gross. Everything’s gross here actually. Check out that glass for example.” She
pointed to the glass object next to the encyclopaedias in the bookshelf, a heavy vase with a
cat’s face painted on it. “So fucking ugly. Like everything else in here. Do you know what
drives me crazy? That Viveca and Bengt think there somebodies. Just because mum and dad
are divorced and they’re still married, we’re expected to walk around here all impressed by
them. It’s like we’re supposed to think they have it all. Look around; is there anything here
you’d want. Anything?”
I shook my head slowly, surprised that the two of us, who never agreed on anything,
apparently suddenly did. There was something repulsive about this house and Emma sensed it
too. Maybe she wasn’t an idiot after all, I thought, maybe not an idiot at all?
“Theo’s the worst part”, I said.
She nodded violently. “What’s wrong with that kid? He seems to think he’s royalty or
something. Imagine the shock he’ll get when he starts high school and realises all the girls are
laughing at him. He’ll be completely clueless and run after them with that camera like a
retard.” She thought about it for a moment. “But I actually feel sorry for him. Bengt, Bengt’s
the real villain. He’s the one who’s convinced Theo he’s some sort of fucking prodigy.
Where did he get that? Because he’s a boy, or what? Can you imagine them sucking up to a
girl like this? Like, tell her she’s the best at everything? They’d never have. They’d just have
made her learn how to cook all these things, like that aioli Viveca’s always pushing on us.
They’d have turned her into a little mini-Viveca, that’s what I think. And that’s why they
look down on us. Because we don’t give a shit about her disgusting food and house and…”
She paused briefly, lowering her voice further. “Because we refuse to be like her!”
Emma and I were experiencing a rare bonding moment. I looked at her, stretched out
on the sofa like the little diva she was, nutcracker in one hand and the other fanned out
against the edge of the cushion so that every manicured nail flashed in the gloom.
“Refuse”, she mumbled and waved the nutcracker around.
My sister, my stupid little sister. Were we actually on the same side in this world?
Was the only thing that set us apart our strategy for combatting the enemy? The thought had
never occurred to me before.
Suddenly she started up out of the sofa. Mum and Viveca were bumbling down the
stairs. The second floor was the last stop on the obligatory grand tour of the house and they
would soon be joining us again.
Emma and I exchanged a look and suppressed a shared sigh. She got her phone out.
“Half six”, she said. “At least it’s almost over.”
*
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Viveca gushed when we’d all gathered on the sofas, “how quiet it is
around here?”
The evening was actually turning out alright; it could almost be mistaken for pleasant.
By now, some of the empty surfaces had been shrouded in darkness, making the house seem
more like a home than an artist’s studio. Emma and I had curled up in one of the armchairs
and were watching proceedings around the coffee table, trying to stifle our giggling. Our runin with Theo was still fresh in our minds and we were doing nothing to hide it. He was sitting
78
across from us but wouldn’t look in our direction, hiding behind a handheld games console, a
shiny little Nintendo.
“Nintendo, isn’t that a bit too easy for him?” Emma snickered. “Shouldn’t he be
studying, like, the Bible?” She muffled her laughter in a cushion. “Study”, she squealed,
pleased with her choice of word, “I think it’s probably time for someone to study now.”
I burst out laughing too, a little too loudly. Soon Viveca would intervene with nosy
questions about what we were talking about and whether we didn’t want to let the rest of the
group share in the joke.
But she let us be. Her neuroses usually calmed down after nightfall; the most
important things had been said and she could allow herself to relax a little and let
conversation drift to less emotionally charged topics.
“Now, this is Christmas as it should be”, she was saying. “Family, good food.” What
she was referring to was the absence of presents, a change she had initiated herself after a
long, dramatic monologue peppered with gloomy buzzwords like “landfills” and “polar ice
caps”. “It’s so nice to get away from the consumerist hysteria. Isn’t it?” Bengt? Eva? Isn’t it
nice not to have to deal with all that stuff?”
There was a general murmur of agreement around the table. Bengt picked up a
handful of nuts: “Sure, of course, if only more people would take responsibility…”
“Viveca, the environmental activist”, Emma whispered in my ear and disappeared
into her cushion again. When she came back up, her eyes were tearing up with laughter. “I
think Viveca is onto something big. I think she’s about to change the whole world.”
I gave her a gentle kick in the shin. But this time, we were less lucky.
“Everything okay over there?” There was not a trace of warmth in Viveca’s
unnaturally wide eyes. “Happy and content?” She pushed a box of chocolates toward us.
“Girls, don’t just sit there. Go ahead.”
I reluctantly reached for yet another praline. She turned to me. “That reminds me,
Lollo, where were we? What did you say you were up to these days?”
I froze, mid-movement. Were we back on this now?
“Weren’t you, if I remember correctly, that is…?” And then she said it: “Wasn’t it
something to do with a fast food restaurant?”
Fast food restaurant. Even though it was one of the better jobs I’d had, the words
made my stomach contract with shame. It sounded so stupid, so simple and grimy. I may
have imagined it, but I thought I saw Theo grinning vindictively behind his Nintendo. The
praline crumbled into a grainy mass in my mouth.
“Not anymore”, I managed, “that was actually quite a long time ago.”
My eyes avoided Viveca’s, landing on her chest instead. Reddish skin, clusters of pale
freckles – proud souvenirs from the frequent holidays the family went on and that she
bragged about as often as she could. A small pendant, a silver fish, rested in the little
depression between her collar bones.
“Really?” she exclaimed, making the fish bounce out of its hollow. “You young
people, always on the move. Back and forth, that’s how it is, isn’t it?” She cocked one
eyebrow, as if to say she knew all about it, what it was like out there these days.
It bothered me. What did she know about me? She knew nothing and I had a sudden
impulse to tell her as much. What if I did? I took a deep breath. And then, as usual, I stopped
myself.
“As I was saying before…” My voice failed me, didn’t convey any of the anger I was
feeling, “I’m not doing much right now. Not right now.”
She pursed her lips angrily. “I see, right. I guess that’s how it is then.” She couldn’t
hide her disappointment at not being given the information she was angling for. I was so
uncommunicative, so ungenerous.
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And we got stuck like that. She glared at me, and I glared back. It was a strange
moment, crackling with intense hostility. I’d never before confronted Viveca – in fact, aside
from various trivial rows at home, I’d pretty much never been in a conflict with a grownup. I
really had no idea where this was heading.
She was sitting on the edge of the sofa, in a crooked pose with no arm support, which
meant her arms were dangling free. Her face looked like a map of ugly, Swedish middle-age
and would almost definitely make you depressed if you looked at it for too long: big pores,
unruly bristles on her upper lip; pale, psychotic eyes behind thick frames. And still, I couldn’t
stop myself from doing just that; I studied her intently, until everything else faded away.
Suddenly Emma’s phone rang. A faint ringtone, the tiny mewling of a kitten – it took
everyone a while to locate its source. She pressed her phone to her ear, muttering something
incomprehensible as she got to her feet. “I’m sorry”, she mumbled, “but I have to take this.”
A long, confused silence fell. It was my chance to escape. If I pulled out now, mum
would intervene with some pointless nonsense about the tranquillity of Christmas and the
conflict would be forgotten and erased from the bland narrative that was our family album.
But I didn’t. It was me against Viveca, someone had to win and it was too late to back down.
“Yes, that’s exactly how it is”, I said. My voice sounded different now. Fragile but
focused. “I’m doing nothing.”
Viveca shifted in her seat. With a long exhalation she collapsed in the sofa as though
she’d just been through a physical ordeal.
“And no boyfriend either”, she puffed. “So you’re saying –“
She might as well just have come right out with it. Without a job and without a
boyfriend, I was nothing. “Nobody, they think I’m a fucking nobody”, Lidija would say
sometimes, referring to semi-acquaintances and neighbours and anyone else she perceived as
condescending.
And at this point, how can I explain it, a cold force filled me, a massive jolt of energy,
as though Lidija was speaking through me, and my whole body reverberated with the sound
of a voice that said something like: “Come on, don’t let these losers get you down.
I sat up straight. What was going on here? Why was Viveca attacking me like this?
She wants to put me in my place, I thought. She’s sitting there, trying to put me in my place.
“What I’m saying is that I’m unemployed”, I heard myself say. I took a deep breath –
and then the words just poured out: “Exactly. No job whatsoever, not doing anything at all.
Unless you count walking around Vinterviken and feeding the gulls, that is.”
This caught everyone’s attention; even Bengt had rolled up his newspaper and was
looking at me. Viveca was open-mouthed; Theo had put his Nintendo down on the table.
For some reason, the Nintendo caught my eye: shiny buttons, the protective plastic
film still on the screen. We had decided to skip the presents a few years ago and I had never
given it much thought. I didn’t care either way, because I hardly missed the rubbish Viveca
used to give us – knitted cardigans and things for the home, always stuff attempting to usher
me in a direction I had no interest in. But now the lie was staring me in the face: the Nintendo
was a Christmas present. They’d obviously exchanged gifts over here, loads probably. The
no-present rule was actually a ploy to avoid having to give us anything. What a two-faced,
revolting bitch Viveca was, I thought to myself, and how ridiculous, having to make out as
though every tiny thing she did was a big deal. I hated Viveca. And I hated big deals.
“You get what I’m saying, right?” I pressed on. “No job and no money. And no
boyfriend either. That’s right, no one to fuck. Because that’s what you really wanted to know,
right? Is she fucking? Might there even be babies soon? I’d made my voice shrill and stupid,
a caricature of Viveca’s. “But I’m sorry. None of the above.” At this point, I don’t know why,
I suddenly thought of Mimmi and said: “But I am considering becoming a stripper. Online.”
Nervous laughter broke out. Bengt and Theo laughed, they all did.
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“But Louise…” Viveca snorted. Her face had twisted into an ugly grin, she almost
looked disfigured. “What are you talking about?”
Then Emma returned. She was still busy on her phone, oblivious to the strange mood.
“It was Kelly”, she said, without raising her eyes from the display. “She just wanted
to wish me a happy Christmas.”
And, as if by magic, everything stopped.
*
I slept badly that night. One incoherent, Christmas inspired nightmare after another, like a
stack of frightening snapshots: I was pregnant; Viveca was congratulating me with hand-medown pregnancy clothes; some other relative appeared out of nowhere and tried to give me a
hammock.
When I woke up, my head was aching and I shuffled through the flat toward the
bathroom like a sleepwalker. In the hallway, I ran into mum who was on her knees, poking
around under the dresser with a ruler. To my surprise, she stood up in front of me and jabbed
me in the stomach with the ruler.
“Hey”, she said, “you weren’t very pleasant to Viveca yesterday.”
“Okay”, I replied.
“Is that all you have to say for yourself?”
She fixed me sternly. She looked dull and tired. A completely new and highly
disagreeable thought struck me: Maybe she was more like Viveca than I cared to admit?
I pushed past her. “I don’t give a shit about Viveca”, I said and slammed the door shut
behind me.
From inside the bathroom, I was forced to listen to her surly outburst. “That’s just
fine!” Her voice sounded unusually shrill and horrible – unusually like Viveca’s. “Don’t give
a shit about anything! That’s what you’re good at!” And then, further away: “And you don’t
even have a job!”
*
The days that followed were characterised by bitter trench fighting between me and mum.
She waylaid me whenever she got the chance; I pretended not to see her. “So”, she’d say.
“So”, I’d reply. One night when we were facing off on the black stain on the cork flooring in
the kitchen, the scene of most of our rows, I caught myself studying her. Why did she insist
on wearing those baggy jeans? Why did she waddle around here at all? I’m not exaggerating
when I say that something about mum scared me. Why didn’t she want to do anything with
her life? Why was she happy settling for this?
On New Year’s Eve, I didn’t leave my room once. Fireworks crackled outside my
window. The grinding headache was back and I was writing furious mantras in my diary, my
temples throbbing, crossing out and starting over until only one line remained: “I’m not going
to be like them. I’ll never be like them!”
*
Four days later, Lidija was back. It was slightly earlier than normal and my heart trembled
when it dawned on me that she was here, in Aspudden, already. “Lidija”, I texted, “come
out!”
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Twenty minutes later, she was outside my building. She was wearing a red scarf, red
lipstick and lots of blush on her cheeks – she shone like an angel in the fog. I gave her a hug,
an unusually hard one.
“Wow”, she said. “Someone missed me.”
“Everything sucked without you”, I said. “Christmas Eve was horrible.”
“Tell me.”
“I hate my aunt. She’s a fucking idiot. Everyone’s an idiot actually. Did I ever tell you
about my cousin? Theo?” I was just about to launch into a tirade about Theo, but the mere
thought of him instantly sapped all my energy. “Never mind”, I said, “you don’t want to
know.” I put my arm through hers and we set off across the damp cobblestones, like so many
times before. “Tell me something about Belgrade. How was it?”
“Awful.” She said it like she’d just had acid reflux. “The relatives, all of it. I hate
Serbia. I’m never going back.”
“Oh my god. Why are people such nut jobs?”
“I have no idea. But it doesn’t matter. Come on, let’s head down to Rocky Point.”
*
So we crashed through the trees again and skated across the slippery rocks to the old, worn
bench that was Rocky Point, our Rocky Point. It wasn’t freezing, but it was far from warm,
and I wedged my hands in under my thighs.
“So Belgrade wasn’t a riot”, I said to Lidija.
“Not exactly.”
“What happened?”
She shrugged. “Just the usual stuff, pretty much constant nagging. Mum went nuts
when she found out I still don’t have a job. She asked me how things were going and, well, I
don’t lie, not to my mum. She blew up, went at me for hours. Called me a bunch of things,
propalica, hobo, prostitute and whatever else. Oh, and, okay, listen to this. She told me
you’re a bad influence on me.”
“Me?”
“Don’t look so shocked. You are a bad influence on me, aren’t you? But, I mean, I’m
a bad influence on you, too. That’s what I told her as well; I said that if she has to blame
someone, she should blame me. You went to uni, you were going to be a writer and
everything. But now that’s all gone to pot, and I told her that. Then she started crying.”
“God.” I let out a feeble laugh. Whether it was at my own moribund career or the
thought that it had brought Lidija’s mother to tears, I wasn’t sure. “What about your dad?
What did he say?”
“Nothing. He never says a fucking word. Just sits on the sofa, sulking because he
can’t hear the TV. It’s always the same. Mum yells and dad sulks because mum’s yelling.
And it never ends.”
The thought of my own conflict with mum made me uneasy. We were on speaking
terms again but things were still tense, so much so that I had to wonder if they were ever
going to go back to normal.
“So you’ve fallen out?” I asked.
“Oh no, not at all.” She shook her head strenuously; strands of hair stuck to her
painted lips. “In Serbia everyone fights like cats and dogs but it doesn’t mean anything. The
last few days I was there, they were super sweet, didn’t want to let me go and that. They said
everything was their fault, that they’d abandoned me and that I should move back to them in
Belgrade so they could take care of me. In the end, they gave me loads of money, like seven
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thousand kronor. It’s a flipping fortune down there and I told them I absolutely refused to
accept it. But they insisted, obviously.”
“Seven thousand, wow.”
“It’s all in a drawer at home. It’s going to last forever.” She shot me a wry smile. “So
now we don’t have to webcam.”
We both laughed at this, a gentle, conciliatory laugh that made me warm inside. I
looked at Lidija, this messy, intense creature. What had I done to deserve her? I’d never
understand it.
“That was one fucking lousy idea”, she sighed and lit a cigarette. “I don’t know what I
was thinking. Unemployed and naked on the internet. What if mum had found out; she’d
never have forgiven me.”
“So you were considering it?”
“Yes, I was. That’s the sick thing.” She took a drag on her cigarette, then exhaled.
The smoke dissipated instantly. “And you? You didn’t?”
“No.”
“Come off it.”
“I actually don’t think I did.”
“You’re such a pussy. You must have thought about it at least once?”
“I don’t know.” I stared straight ahead. “Maybe once.”
“Once?”
“Yes. Actually no. Lidija, I don’t know.”
And it was then, at that exact moment, listening to the echo of my monotonous
phrases, so pointless and so typically me, that it dawned on me, harshly and ruthlessly like a
punch in the gut: It wasn’t her, and it wasn’t us. It was me. I was the one who’d pushed us
into this dead-end.
What was wrong with me? Was I not a person who wanted things? Who felt things? I
was. Why didn’t I tell her so? Why could I barely say anything at all? For the first time in my
life, I felt that my repertoire of gestures, my terseness and shrugs were a burden. Was this
even me? I guess it was. But it wasn’t me to the extent that I’d made out. It was also a role I
played, had been playing so masterfully I no longer knew how to step out of it.
I took a deep breath and let the air escape my nostrils slowly. Everything was serene,
the water, the trees. This place, so familiar, suddenly seemed twisted, strange. Weird, deep
smells rose out of the forest, damp, soil and orris root. It smelled of death and decay. This
eternal cycle of life, was I just a small part of it? Was this all there was? Had I been right all
along; was I without purpose in this world? It seemed both terrifying and eminently probable.
I dug my fingers deeper into my jacket pockets. And then paralysing exhaustion
overwhelmed me; I felt like I was going to drop dead right then and there.
“Lidija”, I said, “let’s do it.”
She took a last drag on her cigarette and flicked it away. “What?” she said,
“webcam?”
“Yeah. Let’s try it.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
83
PART III
84
14
So now we’ve reached the part of the story you’ve already heard about. I have to say, they
conveyed it extremely effectively. I’m guessing you’re picturing it like a series of sleazy
polaroids, or something along those lines. Tender girls’ bodies, naked, of course. K
significantly blurrier – a pasty back, the shadow of a jawbone perhaps. And heaps of ugly
interiors: condoms and piles of clothes, damp notes held down by some ashtray. A firm grip
on a wrist, in the next picture we zoom in on a pair of naked breasts…
I don’t know how much I cared about all that back then. At that point, I wanted to run
and hide for so many reasons, it probably wouldn’t have mattered what they wrote. But eight
years later, those articles still bother me. They get under my skin, less so on some days,
relentlessly on others. I don’t know how to explain it; it’s a bit like back pains that make
themselves known when you’re having a bad day in general.
For the longest time, I thought it was for the obvious reason, that those were not my
words, not my story. But now I can add to that rationale: What they wrote wasn’t just a
different story, it was K’s story. I don’t shy away from that statement anymore – the
newspapers’ versions matched K’s perverted convictions exactly. There he was, him and his
tendencies, and there were we, the bodies, devoid of humanising traits: life and language,
gaze and intentions. They didn’t even manage to capture Lidija, quite a feat in itself actually.
She was “older”; she was the one who “handled the contact”. And who was I? No one knows.
I’m writing this at quarter past eleven. I should be in town really – Elena has already
called several times. Instead I’m sat here again. I slept almost nine hours last night and my
head has stopped throbbing. I think I’m ready. I’m going to tell the story now, tell you
everything you didn’t get to know: about Aspudden in the deceptive spring sunshine and
billowing dust, about the raucous singing of the high school graduates and the bitter taste of
MDMA, which more than anything characterised that frenzied period of my life. They say
spring is the season of madness. I think they may be right…
*
“Seriously, this cold”, Mimmi huffed and hid her face in yet another Kleenex.
We’d bumped into her in Aspudden in the middle of the day; this time, she was on her
own. She was ill, she told us, had been “for weeks”, and all in all she was “just so weak” and
“bloody uninspired”. Did we want to come over? Just for a bit? She looked at us with
bloodshot eyes that kept blinking delicately in the wind as though we were her last hope and I
looked back, thinking about the incessantly recurring but as yet inconclusive discussions
Lidija and I had had about webcamming, and then I linked arms with Mimmi and exclaimed,
too loudly, as if I were drunk, even though I hadn’t been anywhere near alcohol: “Absolutely!
Let’s go.”
We sat down in her kitchen, which was less tidy than the last time we saw it. Stacks of
magazines jostled for space on the tiny folding table, kibble ringed the dog bowls on the
floor. The chairs were drowning under piles of clothes and belts; there were sweet wrappers
everywhere. A unique home, a home with special possibilities – I’ve no idea why I thought
that, but just as the thought crossed my mind, all my objections faded away, all the vague
feelings of unease I had come to associate with Mimmi.
85
A strange but enjoyable tension was in the air; I think we could all sense it. We were
going to do something special tonight – the only question was what.
From behind her Kleenex, Mimmi sniffled: “You know what, alcohol tends to help
with stuff like this. Clears the sinuses, right?” And then she slid off her chair and started
rummaging through the jumble of bottles clustered around one of the table legs. “You want
some too, don’t you? Right?”
We both nodded.
“How about this one, for example?” She held up the only clear bottle among the
otherwise green ones, a big thing with the name Bacardi printed on the label. “It’s rum. Do
you like rum? All good cocktails are made with rum, have you ever noticed that? Daiquiris,
mojitos… speaking of which –“ She looked around. “You know what, I actually happen to
have some mint.” She got up, yanking open the kitchen cupboards. An ice tray was dug out of
the freezer, pans clattered. “Just have to make a syrup, the syrup’s the whole game when
you’re making cocktails, you know that, don’t you?”
Cocktails, I mused while I studied her quick, coordinated movements, is this when I
learn to drink cocktails like in the movies?
Three glasses, all different, landed in front of us. I took the smallest one, which was
actually a yellow plastic mug. Lime wedges and mint leaves, an onslaught of sophisticated
aromas: fruit, grass and caramel.
“It’s not entirely authentic. I had to use mineral water instead of club soda. But it
works, right?”
“I like it”, Lidija said. “It’s nice.”
I took a sip, letting the carbonation fizz up my nose. And then I said: “It’s delicious.
Best thing I ever drank.”
Which was entirely true.
*
Two hours later, I leaned across the table and grabbed my third mojito. It was pitch black
outside now and tiny snowflakes hit the kitchen window with the stubbornness of drizzly
rain. A deep sound, distant but still discernible, reverberated through the building like a
whisper. “It’s the underground”, someone had explained the last time we were here, “it runs
directly underneath this building.” And I don’t know if it was the drinks or just this
wonderful feeling of being in a blissful, shimmering bubble, our own universe high above
and separate from the rest of the world, but I felt warm and happy, happier than I had been in
a long time.
“You’re in a good mood tonight”, Mimmi said.
“You think?” I smiled wanly. “I think it’s more like relief. I’m glad it’s all over,
Christmas, all my awful relatives. I had a really shit Christmas this year, worse than usual.”
The atmosphere in the room was gentle and intimate, almost like we were at camp and
had snuck out in the middle of the night. Mimmi was resting her chin on her knees.
“Tell me more,” she said and looked at me with squinting, intelligent eyes, “I want to
know.”
I sighed. “I’m just so sick of it, making nice with a bunch of people I can’t even stand.
And then mum was on my case afterwards. If I’m being completely honest –“ I wasn’t tipsy
anymore; I was properly hammered and I decided to lean into it: “I’m so fucking tired of my
life. I think it’s safe to say I hate it.”
She pulled a cigarette from a pack lying on the table. I don’t know what kind of
response I expected, a few chipper platitudes probably. But none were forthcoming. Instead
she put the cigarette between her chapped lips and said nasally:
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“You know, I think it’s good sometimes, hating everything. Good things usually come
of it.”
“Like what?”
“Well, something new. A change of course.”
“Well –“ and then I stopped because I didn’t know what to say. I took a sip of my
mojito – it tasted sweeter now – and turned to Lidija. She’d been pretty quiet all night, but
now she shifted in her seat and looked at us alertly, as though she’d just woken up from a
deep, healthy slumber.
“I hope it does”, she said, “because we could really do with trying something new.”
Had we both been working toward this point without knowing it? It certainly seemed
that way because now things started happening very fast. We talked over each other, a series
of stumbling statements about “wanting to cut loose” and “just not give a fuck” – and
suddenly one of us mentioned webcamming. How long had she been doing it for? How did it
work? That last question came from me.
“Well, what do you want to know?” Mimmi said. She didn’t exactly sound
embarrassed but also not fully prepared for the change of subject.
“Do you use, you know, some kind of website?” Lidija asked.
“God, no.” She shook her head vigorously. “Sit around on some portal in my pants all
day long? I won’t say I haven’t tried it, but it’s not for me. It’s too much like hard work.
You’d think it’s easy, but it’s not; it’s like slavery actually. Besides, I want to know who’s on
the other side of the screen.” She dunked her cigarette in a glass of water; yellow streaks
bloomed in it. “I have a few contacts. They’re my friends and they get in touch sometimes.
It’s really simple, kind of like the three of us meeting up now. You just agree a time and then,
well…”
“What kind of people is it?” I asked.
“What do you mean, they’re just people.”
“But are they…” I could have said anything: old, nasty, weird. But what went with
was: “Are they ugly?”
“Why would they be?” For the first time she looked a bit annoyed. “They’re not ugly,
none of them are. And even if they were, what does it matter? I don’t discriminate. It’s not a
date, you know, it’s a kind of conversation. And you don’t just talk to pretty people, do you?”
“Do they pay you?” Lidija wanted to know.
She laughed. “So many questions. But yes, there’s a certain level of remuneration. My
time’s valuable and… Oops, the hob –“
Apparently she’d forgotten to turn off the cooker, something I was much too drunk to
ever have noticed.
She got up, switched it off and sat back down. “Listen, I don’t know what you’re
thinking, but this is webcamming, not prostitution. It’s not like we fuck. Wait, I’ll show you.”
And then she started clearing the table; plates full of crumbs and a laptop, a pink little
Mac, emerged from under the piles of paper.
“Let’s see.” She opened her laptop, and clicked open a window with a chat
programme I didn’t recognise. Loads of icons, red and green. “K’s online. What do you
reckon? Should we have a quick chat?”
We stared at each other. A sudden gust hit the window. Somewhere, far beneath us,
the dull rumbling of the underground. And then it came over me again, the ennui and the
tiredness, a yearning for something, anything, to happen.
I said: “What do I do?”
“It’s super easy. Look.” She clicked one of the icons, one of the green ones and wrote
a few lines. And then she pushed the laptop toward me. “There, he’s waiting.”
“But what am I supposed to do?”
87
“Nothing. You don’t have to do anything. Just say hi, talk to him. He likes talking.”
And that’s how it came about that I was the one who started typing:
Hi
His reply appeared on the screen, almost instantaneously:
Hi there
Shit, I thought. What was I supposed to do now? What were we supposed to talk about?
“Don’t overthink it.” Mimmi was standing by the kitchen counter again, putting our
empty glasses into the sink. “Just ask what he’s up to.”
So I wrote:
How you doing?
And we continued:
Just fine. You?
Fine.
What’s your name?
“He wants to know my name”, I said.
“Make something up”, Mimmi advised.
“Like what?”
“How should I know? Candy Darling, Holly, Ilona? Just pick something.”
My god, I thought to myself, where does she get these things? If I’d spent a whole day
thinking about it, I would never have come up a single name as weird as those.
“Ilona then, I guess?” I said.
“Ilona’s great.”
Ilona
Beautiful name
You think?
Yes, unusual and beautiful
A sudden warmth spread through me. Odd, why would I be flattered that he liked a name that
wasn’t mine? I didn’t normally like compliments; I found the few that came my way smarmy
and intrusive. And yet, here I was, with a compliment that had nothing to do with me and a
silly little giggle bubbling up through my chest.
What are three awesome girls like yourselves up to on a night like this then?
Nothing much, just having a bit of a party
I can imagine
Cocktails and stuff
Cocktails? Not too shabby
We like cocktails
Of course, who doesn’t?
Yeah, that’s true
I started listing my alcohol preferences, trying to sound more grown up, I guess. I liked wine,
I wrote, sometimes beer. But cocktails were the best, of course. What kind of cocktails? he
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wanted to know. At this point I reached for every cocktail name I knew: mojito, gin & tonic
and Bloody Mary (that last one I’d read about recently; one of Emma’s magazines had lying
around the hallway for a week, opened to an article with the headline “Beat your hangover –
like a pro”, and it had listed this mysterious drink, recipe and all).
And without knowing how it happened, we were suddenly discussing all kinds of
preferences, food, hobbies, all things about which I knew very little and cared even less, but
which I apparently had opinions on anyway. I claimed, even though I barely did either
anymore, that I liked TV and literature, in that order. He was impressed by this and when I
looked back at what I had written – simple, airy sentences that had no obvious intention to
make an impression – I was too. In writing, I seemed both older and more relaxed, which was
gratifying in itself. I can write, I thought, I still know how.
Lidija came and sat down next to me. She had a glass in one hand and slurped at the
contents with a loud, gurgling sound.
“What are you writing about?” she asked curiously.
“All kinds of things. I just told him about Emma.”
She lowered her glass. “Emma? Why on earth would you write about her?”
Which was a sign as good as any that my judgement was quickly becoming impaired.
But I dismissed it: “He just asked if I had any siblings, so I mentioned her. I didn’t tell
him anything specific. Hey”, I said, “did you want to write?”
She shook her head sceptically. “You write”, she said. “You’re the author here.”
And so I was drawn back into the conversation happening on the screen. I told him
about mum, about the constant fighting and the deadlock we were currently in. Everything
sucks and everyone is retarded, I wrote, and I soon found myself back where I’d started that
evening, in a dark but driven monologue; I was fed up with myself and with the fact that
nothing ever happened, something just had to happen!
His replies verged on the mechanical: “Take it easy”, he wrote, “things happen when
you least expect them to.” It was clichés, almost everything he said belonged to the sober
realm of platitudes and banality. But it didn’t matter, something about his anonymous tone
appealed to me. Without really thinking about it, I started fantasising about what he might
look like. I imagined him tall and tanned with soft, friendly features, kind of like an attractive
older brother in a travel catalogue. As we wrote more, the image became clearer and
irresistible details were added, like big eyes and beautiful hands.
“Is he good-looking?” I heard myself ask.
Mimmi had joined Lidija on the other side of the table; they were flipping through
fashion magazines and giggling. Now she looked up:
“Who? K?”
“Yes?”
“Hey, you’re not failing in love, are you?”
“Come off it. But it’s nice to know who you’re talking to. Tell me he’s not ugly at
least.”
“My god, you worry a lot about people being ugly.” She laughed and then said, her
eyes buried in the magazine once more: “Don’t worry. He’s not ugly, not at all, actually.”
More alcoholic beverages were brought out, wines, both red and white. I could hear
them discussing clothes and hair colours – Lidija was contemplating a return to black,
Mimmi was thinking of going red.
This is the point when I should stop, I thought, this is when I should switch off the
laptop and go join my friends. But I liked sitting there by myself; I couldn’t even remember
the last time I felt so content. I poured myself another glass of wine and downed it. And then
another. Eventually I was seeing double and had a hard time hitting the right keys:
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Hey Im getting drunk Alot. Can barely writr anymre. Stupid lol
Stupid? I hardly think you’re stupid.
Haha
In fact, my guess is you’re both smart and very beautiful
I could almost hear that last part spoken, by a young but distinctive man’s voice, almost like
in a TV ad. I took a deep breath. Everything was spinning now, from arousal, drunkenness
and confusion.
He wrote:
Talk again some time?
You want to?
Love to
Ok
And then I shut the laptop. I stared into space, silent. He wanted to talk again. He’d love to,
even. I repeated the phrase to myself a few times, tasted each syllable. It was like being
embraced. And I wanted to be embraced.
“How did it go?”
Mimmi was leaning against the doorjamb – apparently the festivities had moved into
the living room. A white strand of hair hung across her face like a curtain, from behind which
she was studying me with a strange, eerie expression. She knew everything, I thought, what
I’d said, what he’d said.
“Fine”, I said, “I guess it went fine.”
*
“What happened with you and K?” Lidija asked as we walked home.
“Nothing happened, we were just chatting.”
“Come on.”
“Lidija, nothing happened.”
*
That night, I stood in front of the full-length mirror in my room. I hadn’t had a proper look in
a mirror for ages, but now I studied my shadowy face for a long time. With one finger, I
traced the remains of a thin eyeliner wing, looking myself up and down.
I was not Lidija, I thought; I wasn’t gorgeous. On the other hand, no one could
compete with Lidija’s dark, almost artificial beauty, composed entirely of black, white and
red. But, I told myself for the first time, I still had a good face, smooth skin, cheekbones,
things like that. Maybe not an obviously beautiful face, but cooperative, not without
potential. I just had to remember to put some effort in. Accentuate stuff, eyes and lips, like
Lidija always did.
I pouted a little. “Kiss me”, I breathed. Then I leaned forward and put my lips against
my own reflection.
*
90
When I woke up the next morning, my throat was sore and I was lying in a pool of cold
sweat. I was ill and a few days of marvellous normality followed; on the Wednesday I helped
mum with the shopping, the day after, I cleaned my room.
On Saturday morning, Emma appeared in the door to my room. Did I want to help her
bake a lemon cake? Despite her constant dieting, Emma had a strange habit of regularly
taking to the kitchen to create various baked goods, cakes and glazed muffins, pies made
from scratch. Baking “calmed” her, she claimed, a statement I’d always dismissed as silly
and stolen from some celebrity in one of her magazines. But as I stuck a finger into the cool,
yellow batter, still feeling slightly feverish, I understood what she meant. Cakes were
unnecessary and superfluous, laborious excesses amid a sea of boring obligations, and
consequently something to lose oneself in. For a while, that is.
That evening, I sat down on my bed with my laptop and the moist remnants of the
cake. I ate a piece, staring at the branches waving outside my window. And then I was
overcome by a sudden and strong urge to go out again. I checked the time on my laptop. It
was 11.40 p.m. – too late to call anyone.
Without being fully aware of what I was doing, I pulled my laptop closer, opened the
web browser and mechanically entered the URL for Mimmi’s blog. The animal pictures and
poems had been replaced with an ongoing study of Mimmi herself. There were flash-lit
pictures and grainy video clips from far away and close up, grins and laughs, a blue wig, a
pair of torn tights, and –most ubiquitously – her old dressing gown.
The most recent post consisted of a video without commentary, recorded on a shaky
mobile phone. The clip was very short and showed Mimmi in a t-shirt against a familiar
backdrop, the mustard yellow cupboards. A slow song, I couldn’t tell what it was, played in
the background. She rocked slowly to the music, put a cigarette to her lips and sucked at it
greedily.
When did I overcome my objections to webcamming? On Christmas Eve? After
IM’ing with K? If someone had asked me to do it, I would have said yes both those times.
But it was only here and now, as Mimmi lifted her shirt up and exposed her breasts with a
hoarse and triumphant laugh, that I became aware of a voice inside me, cold and clear like an
electric shock. It said: I want to do this. I’m going to do this.
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15
“It’s so good to see you.”
I honestly don’t know how we ended up in Mimmi’s kitchen again. It may have been
another random encounter, a phone call or whatever. Either way, that’s what our relationship
was like now; like people in love, we were thrown together again and again, guided by a
mutual desire.
It wasn’t completely dark outside yet; a blue light fell across the mottled linoleum
floor. It was a simple, idle afternoon. I don’t know if we’d talked about what we were going
to do. Mimmi might have dropped hints about a party, “a real one”, which was, as I would
soon learn, what you called it when drugs were involved. Or maybe not. As I said, I’m not
sure. There are a lot of things from that time I don’t quite remember.
“Can I smoke?” Lidija asked.
Mimmi pulled out an ashtray from under the mountain of dishes on the kitchen
counter. “Of course”, she said, “Come over here.”
They huddled together under the kitchen fan, resting their long, pale arms on the
cooker. I wished I smoked. And I wished this were my home. I didn’t care that it was worn
and cheap; in the light of my longing, everything, the laminate flooring, the folding table and
the brash kitchen cupboards, blended into a kind of modern yet romantic whole. Even the
smells, a dense, expanding cloud of smoke, coffee and perfumes, was intoxicating to me. It
smelled like Christmas, a real, generous Christmas far from Viveca’s sterile affair.
“Lollo, you look great today.” Lidija was watching me, leaning back against the food
cupboard, her eyes bright and sober. We hadn’t had anything to drink yet.
“Yeah, right.”
I had, as a matter of fact, put some effort into my appearance that day. I was using
more makeup than usual (lip liner and eyebrow pencil, loads of mascara), and I had dug deep
into the recesses of my wardrobe to find what I was looking for, a stretchy top Emma had
bought me for my birthday a couple of years ago. It was a tiny, red thing, and it made me
look smaller and skinnier than I was, with no boobs and narrow shoulders. But it also made
me look sexier than I did in my normal clothes, and that took precedence.
“You’re the one who’s good-looking”, I said. “I’m just okay.”
She let out a thoughtful cloud of smoke through her nostrils, smiled. “Today you’re
the good-looking one.”
But a few minutes later, when she dumped her jacket on one of the kitchen chairs, that
turned out to be untrue. Underneath, she was wearing a dark blue corset made almost entirely
of lace. It was dramatic, verging on old-fashioned and together with her recently dyed jetblack hair and heavy make-up, it made her look like the mysterious heroine in some oldtimey romantic thriller.
“Wow, let me look at you”, Mimmi said and looked her up and down. “You look
exactly like Jackie Bisset!”
Every once in a while, Mimmi tried to sweet-talk Lidija, fully aware that she had not
won her over yet. This, references so obscure neither one of us understood them, was her
latest ploy. But it rarely worked:
“Right”, was all Lidija said. “I don’t know who that is.” She flicked a column of ashes
into the ashtray. “I was actually going for Ceca.”
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Ceca, I knew, because Lidija kept nattering on about her, was a popstar and mega
celebrity in Serbia, with a love life of the turbulent and public kind. She was also Lidija’s one
and only role model.
“Ceca?” Mimmi asked.
“She sings. She’s really big in Serbia, bigger than the president.” Lidija stuck her
head under the fan, inhaling deeply. “I love her.”
“I like stuff like that.” Mimmi nodded eagerly. “Epic things. Nothing half-arsed. It
should be for real.”
They stubbed their cigarettes out and a sort of quivering silence fell. We were
approaching the next item on the agenda; I knew it; we all knew it. We looked at each other
and then Mimmi put her hand into the pocket of her stonewashed jeans, which, paired with a
tiny, bubble-gum pink wool jumper, constituted tonight’s neat ensemble. She opened her
hand to reveal a small Ziploc bag full of something light blue and grainy.
“Do you know what I think?” she said. “That everyone should get to feel epic every
once in a while. Not just popstars, us too. It’s only right, don’t you think?”
And that was the simple and somehow obvious lead-up to my first ecstasy high. It
happened that afternoon in a flat on Amaliagatan. We huddled up in the kitchen. The sound
of a television came through the wall.
“How long does it take?” Lidija asked.
“Not long.”
And it didn’t. The bitter, chemical taste was still in my mouth when a warm
whooshing sound engulfed first one of my ears and then the other. For a moment, everything
went dark.
“Oh, fuck…”
When I looked up, Mimmi was standing in front of me.
“You okay?” She looked different now, pale and wise like a child. Her pink jumper
glowed a sharp, blazing neon. Her eyes followed my seasick movements and she laughed.
“Seems like it, huh?”
“Now what… what do I do now?” I moaned, sounding enormously aroused.
Which in a way, I was. A warm, intense cramp was emanating from my chest,
squeezing my shoulders and radiating straight to my head. My limbs went heavy and I slid
down the cupboard door. I hit the floor with a drawn-out, messy thud.
Mimmi’s voice hovered somewhere in the vicinity of my head: “Nothing, you don’t
do anything. Just take it easy.”
Cigarette smoke filled the room, giggles and squeals. Another intense wave rolled
over me. I was breathing heavily, my top was soaked through.
“Listen”, I panted with what felt like my last strength, “isn’t it very warm in here?”
*
We made it out onto the balcony, where all three of us collapsed in a heap around the
threshold. It was still winter and it should have been cold but it wasn’t. A breeze, mild and
gentle like a summer wind, caressed my face. I suddenly felt relaxed, awake and incredibly at
peace.
“Mimmi, this is amazing”, I said. “It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me, I
think.”
“Yeah”, Lidija chimed in behind me, “why is this not something we do more often?”
“I love ecstasy”, Mimmi said. “I would take it all the time if it weren’t for, well, that it
doesn’t work. You kind of get immune to it.” The smile she gave us was spaced out and
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clouded – only then did I realise she was high too. “But that’s hardly something you need to
worry about right now.”
I started sweating again. The rushing in my ears was back.
“Mimmi, I think…” That’s all I managed.
“You’re about to peak now.” She lowered her voice. “Just lean back.”
And before we knew it, we were all writhing about amid the damp clutter lined up
along the railing: rolled-up rugs, broken toys and DIY supplies. A brightly coloured beach
boules set rolled out across the stone floor; I picked one up and lay there cradling the ball to
my chest as though it were an infant.
Above me, suspended from the balcony above ours with fishing line, were wind
chimes. It seemed to me the metal rods were staring at me as though they wanted to tell me
something. The area around my eye sockets was pulsating wildly; the rods changed shape and
size, swelled and contracted by turns. In the end, I closed my eyes and floated out into a dark
void sprinkled with dots of light; soap bubbles bursting, soaring hot pink and turquoise
ellipses with glowing white edges…
“Lidija”, I mumbled through the haze, “I love you. Do you know that? Do you
know…”
“I know, Lollo. I know…”
And then we were silent, for how long, I don’t know. It may have been ten minutes, it
may have been hours.
This is how it’s meant to be. This is how I’m always supposed to feel…
The sound of music interrupted my stupor, simple, slow notes that flowed through me
like warm water. A low-pitched, monotonous woman’s voice sang:
Cause everybody knows
She’s a femme fatale
“Nico”, Mimmi hollered from inside the flat; she’d apparently got up without me noticing.
“Do you like Nico? I love Nico!” She pushed the balcony door open. The music was coming
from the laptop in her arms. “By the way, he’s been asking for you.”
She said it without any context.
“Who?”
“You know who.”
And of course, I did. I’d been thinking about K – some days I’d thought about him
nonstop. But the ecstasy had momentarily dulled my pining and to be reminded of him now,
in this state, made me feel slightly shaky.
“What?” I said. “He has?”
She nodded. “Several times even. You must have made quite an impression.”
My whole chest fluttered. I sat up. I was practically already at the laptop.
“Called it”, Lidija mumbled. “I knew there was something going on.” She lay draped
across an old beanbag, gesticulating. “Hey, I want in on this too. I want an alias and –“ Then
she broke off, got to her feet and announced loudly: “My name’s going to be Ivanka. I’ve
always wanted to be called Ivanka.”
“Ivanka, that’s fantastic”, Mimmi piped in.
“Isn’t it –“ Lidija kept her eyes on the laptop. Now she pointed to the black window
covering half the screen. “Hey, what’s that?”
“That’s a webcam.”
“Webcam? Can he see us right now?”
“If I click this circle.”
“Will we see him?”
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“No.”
“No?”
“Unless you absolutely have to –“ She looked at us both. “Listen, there’s tonnes of
ways to go about this, you can more or less do whatever you want. But this is just how he
prefers it. You don’t have to talk to him or anything, writing’s fine.”
We exchanged a look.
“I’m not going to force you to do anything, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Mimmi
shut the laptop and handed it to Lidija. “There, it’s your decision.”
I assume there was more to the conversation, but all I can recall is the heat in my
chest and the icy wind that was suddenly blowing. For a while I lost any sense of my actual
body temperature. “Fuck, I’m freezing to death here”, I heard Lidija say behind me.
And without knowing how it happened, we were back in the flat and had thrown
ourselves on the sofa with the laptop. I sat next to Lidija and could smell everything about
her: cigarette smoke and fruit gum, lipstick and skin.
She looked at me solemnly. “Are you sure?” she said.
*
Hi it’s me again, Ilona
Remember that he can see you”, Lidija breathed in my ear. “Everything little thing you do.”
Which would probably have had an inhibiting effect on me any other time. But not
tonight:
“Mm”, I hissed back. “I hope he takes this opportunity to get a good look.”
Only now did I become aware of on the benefits of ecstasy; a new attitude,
imperturbable and assured, infused my every thought and word. It wasn’t the superficial
gestures of drunkenness, it was a natural and completely genuine confidence, as though it had
been there all along.
When we’d exchanged the standard greetings, I was the one who started writing:
Did you miss me?
Absolutely
I thought so. We really clicked, didn’t we?
We did
Lidija stared at the screen.
“Oh my god”, she said. “You’re worse than me. Is this how you talk to each other?”
I shrugged. “It is today.”
She said nothing for a while, seemingly contemplating the situation. “If you say so”,
she said with obvious lack of conviction. “You’re the expert now.” And then she pulled the
computer closer to her and wrote:
Hi. We haven’t met
I had obviously given some thought as to how I would react to Lidija meeting K. With
enthusiasm or scepticism? Maybe even with jealousy?
With boredom, as it turned out. She introduced herself with the standard rush of
nonsense facts, name and age, something about music and so on. He introduced himself as K,
got excited about the music thing, reiterated that he really liked “good food”. Did she like
food? I had a sudden epiphany: These conversations about food and music and interests were
not just dull, they were pointless and ridiculous and I wanted no part of them:
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You want to see us naked, don’t you? Just say so
The reply was instantaneous:
I’d love to see you naked. If you want to
Love to, there it was again. I loved love to. And I loved sitting here, running the show.
“Hold on”, Lidija said, “you’re not actually going to?” But there was a different tone
to her voice now, tense and excited.
I shot her a quick grin, turned to the screen and then – I pulled my top off.
My whole life, I’d associated being naked in front of men with unease. I’m not talking about
specific insecurities, more a general sense of being exposed. I hated the embarrassing
exchange of looks, the initial fumbling. There was something hideous about it, abnormal
even, as though you almost stopped being a person and became nothing but a prop in a bad
film. One hand here and one there, come on babe, now you’re trembling attractively. The
process kept repeating itself and never became any less agonising.
But this was different. I don’t know if it was the distance or that I was the instigator,
but nothing about this moment reminded me of anything I’d ever experienced. No silent
gauging of his reaction, no flushing chest. Instead, I faced the screen head on, in a state I can
only describe as self-satisfied. Here I was, Aspudden’s Lollo, in the flesh.
My mood rubbed off on Lidija and she started rocking impatiently next to me. “I knew
it”, she laughed. “I knew you had it in you!”
And then she got to her feet and started dancing. She tossed her head; strands of hair
stuck to her face. “Come on”, she said, “join me.”
I grabbed her hands, we fell into each other’s arms, laughing. “You and me…” I said,
“It has to be you and me forever.” Where were these declarations of love coming from? I had
no idea and so I laughed at that too.
Mimmi had been studying us from her position in the middle of the room. She was
lying on her front on the floor, cool like a Siamese cat, chain smoking with the ashtray under
her chin. Now she put her cigarette down and clapped. “You’re amazing, did you know that?
So fucking beautiful.”
Her voice, still hoarse but bright and lovely and articulate like an actress’, hit me like
an exploding rain of light and happiness. We’re beautiful, everyone’s beautiful…
And that’s when we stopped thinking about K. I danced alone, put my hands in the air
and spun away across the floor. The music played and I sang along. Mimmi’s and Lidija’s
voices, close yet distant at the same time:
“We have to do this again some time.”
“Sure, next weekend…”
Next weekend, I thought, how long until then? Five days? Seven? What day was it
today? Friday? Saturday? It had to be at least Saturday, right? These questions went round
and round in my head until my legs felt leaden and jelly-like and I collapsed on the sofa.
Mimmi and Lidija came wobbling out of the dark hallway. To my surprise, Lidija was
completely topless. Had she shown her breasts to K as well? If she had, I’d missed it. They
said something, dropped onto their knees on the floor, laughing uncontrollably. “Lollo, look
at me!” Lidija gasped, gesturing toward her head. She was wearing the Lucia crown, the one
I’d seen on Mimmi’s blog. “I’m a fucking queen, see, a queen…”
I nodded mutely. “Sure, Lidija, sure…”
How long had I been sitting here anyway?
96
Next to my arm I discovered my top. I pulled it back on and made a half-hearted
attempt to get up. On the table, seemingly very far away, was the computer. K’s lines were
flashing, unanswered, in the blueish light:
Are you still there?
Hello?
*
In the bathroom, I met my own doped up eyes for the first time, a sight so miserable I
flinched. My pupils glowed black and ghostly in my ashen face; my mouth gaped open as
though my jaw had come unhinged. I looked like a reptile, primitive and cold, no human
properties whatsoever. I leaned forward, resting my forehead against the mirror, breathing
heavily. And I stayed there, I don’t know how long, until I dozed off and almost fell over.
When I went back out, the living room was empty and someone had turned on the
lights. I rubbed my eyes, stumbled through the hallway and found Lidija and Mimmi in the
kitchen, sitting at the table. Mimmi was holding two five hundred notes in her hand like a fan.
Like the boor I was, I walked straight over to her. “What are you doing?” I said. “And
what’s this?”
“It’s just money for K.” She wore a strangely dignified expression I hadn’t seen
before – big eyes and a firm mouth that spoke to me like I was a stranger.
“Okay, but –“
Even though Mimmi had told us she charged a fee for the kind of activities we’d just
engaged in, and even though Lidija and I had talked about that fee constantly, whether it was
real and if so how big it was, it still took me a moment to realise what was going on.
“Five hundred each, not bad”, I exclaimed and tried to hide my surprise at this
situation. “We were just talking.”
“That wasn’t all you did, was it?” Mimmi smiled wryly. “Besides, he likes talking,
didn’t I tell you?”
We accepted the notes with rushed movements, less casual about this than any of the
other things we’d done that night. There was a pause during which we were careful to avoid
looking at each other. There was so much to say, so many questions to ask, but we were still
high and somehow it just didn’t seem like the time. “You have to drink more water”, Mimmi
murmured. She got up and filled a glass from the tap. “It’s super important when you take E,
I told you that. Otherwise you can get dehydrated.”
A handful of surprisingly banal topics of conversation were broached and quickly
abandoned. Then we fell silent again and stared out the window. It was dark outside now, the
kind of darkness that only exists in wintertime, blueish-black and primeval.
In the end, Mimmi got to her feet and switched the laptop on. Music flowed out into
the room – the same song that had opened this evening. She took a few steps across the floor,
languid but very present, just like in the video clip I’d watched recently. And then she started
humming, so low it was hard to make out the words:
Cause everybody knows
She’s a femme fatale
The things she does to please
She’s a femme fatale
*
97
“That was epic”, I declared as Lidija and I tumbled through the door to Mimmi’s building
and out into the dark yard.
The ecstasy had done its part and I felt soft and fuzzy, which in a way was as
enjoyable as the actual high.
Everything was dead quiet outside. A puddle in the street reflected the moonlight.
“This is when we’re supposed to have regrets, right?” Lidija said and laughed.
“Regrets”, I said. “About what?”
“About what?” She laughed again. “About K obviously. About stripping in front of
some guy we don’t even know maybe?”
K. For a brief moment a few incoherent images flashed by: me naked, Lidija wearing
the Lucia crown. What difference did it make? None at all, none whatsoever. The real
question, I thought, was if I might not still be high? I tottered toward the gate and just as I
was about to push the handle down, a wave of pleasurable cramps twisted my insides, almost
knocking the wind out of me.
“God”, I moaned, and with a sigh I staggered out into the street.
*
We walked home through Vinterviken Gardens. Dawn was already breaking and the fresh,
clean air woke us both up a little.
“Did I ever tell you about Ivan?” Lidija, the more alert of us, asked as we skulked
between the waist-high shrubberies.
She had, several times. Ivan was one of her cousins whose story bordered on modern
tragedy: a serious car accident in adolescence, an addiction to painkillers that had morphed
into Rohypnol abuse before culminating in the day of perdition about ten years ago, when
he’d stabbed a neighbour before storming out into the street and ploughing into a children’s
party. And there, in the yard, under plum trees heavy with fruit, he’d concluded by blowing
his head off. Big headlines in the Serbian papers, family destroyed.
And, of course: constant admonitions from Lidija’s parents never, ever to try
narcotics. “Mum would never forgive me, ever” she’d reminded herself the few times we’d
come tantalisingly close to trying CNS stimulants and hallucinogens. Which was at least one
of the reasons we’d delayed our debut until tonight.
She told the story again to my tired, numb ears. An epilogue, unfamiliar to me, was
added:
“Mum was obviously really worried about me being completely traumatised by the
whole thing. For a while she barely let me go outside. She even offered to sleep in my room
with me.”
“But?” I could tell a but was coming.
“I wasn’t scared, not a bit. I haven’t told her this, but I actually loved it. There’s a
photo of Ivan in one of our albums, from a family get-together the year before. The picture
was nothing special; he was sitting on a sofa with Uncle Danko, just talking. But it fascinated
me. I used to take it out and bring it into the bathroom and I could sit and stare at it in there
for hours, completely mesmerized, while I imagined the things that had happened to him.
And all of it just made me so exhilarated.”
Her voice was different now, low and intense, as though she were about to reveal a
very dark secret. “I’ve never felt like that again”, she said. “Until tonight.”
I stopped, letting out a short laugh. “You’re mental, Lidija, did you know that?”
She shrugged and lit a cigarette. “Maybe I am. But it’s true. I felt so fucking wild
tonight. No, actually, free. Tell me, how often do you get to be free when you’re a girl?
We’re so unfree, have you ever thought about that? We’re always expected to be so fucking
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neat and lovely –“ She was hitting her stride now, gesticulating wildly. “And there’s not that
many ways to protest against that.”
“There aren’t”, I confirmed. I knew she was hoping for more, something drastic or
spiritual. But the subject was too abstract and too complicated for my exhausted brain.
Besides, I was cold.
We started walking again. The sun was coming up; the gravel glittered in the mild
light. I’d seen this landscape a thousand times before and yet it was somehow new. It
surprised me how the allotments were always changing. Now, it was like moving through a
medieval burial ground or Toledo at dawn; the sheds looked like a ghost town, the colour of
the bare ground the kind of shades I’ve always imagined will be the only ones to remain
when civilisation finally unites with nature. Endlessly distorted, dirty pastels: grey and bluegrey, taupe and mauve… It was a dead landscape – and at the same time so alive. At least
that’s how I perceived it this morning, like a place full of furtive life, a place that would
whisper things to you if you just cared to listen.
The wind picked up, and on it drifted fleeting smells, real and imagined. It smelled of
winter, a mild and damp winter about to transform into spring. My heart beat dully and
rhythmically in my chest. I was drunk. No, I was high, I reminded myself. And I remember
thinking for the first time: This is what it feels like. This is when it all starts.
*
My room seemed different when I got back that morning.
The ceiling light, which was switched on, threw a fragile light over its desolate
contents: the empty desk, the world map nailed to the wardrobe door, the spider plant in the
window, tangled and mummified under a web of dust. It was like stepping into an office or a
very cheap hotel room.
I stood in the middle of the room, in front of the world map, on which a few places
had been circled with red felt tip. I read them silently to myself: “Rio de Janeiro, Addis
Ababa, the Borneo Peninsula, Machu Picchu…” It sounded like a boring school assignment,
reference points for a triangulation. What were those places? Did I know anything about
them? If I ever had, I certainly didn’t anymore.
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16
Mimmi had warned us that a certain level of dejection was likely to kick in over the next few
days, a temporary feeling of being drained and absent, which was completely normal and an
effect of the emotional discharge of an ecstasy high. But, she said this too, it could go the
opposite way as well; the high could be so liberating it actually lingered. She called it
afterglow – delightful little reminders of what had been, sometimes lasting no more than a
second, sometimes stretching into long, shimmering moments.
Apparently we were lucky enough to experience the latter, because when I woke up
the next day, I was in an inexplicably good mood and when I met up with Lidija, we started
grinning at each other from a distance.
“Guess who I bumped into on the way over here”, she said.
“Who?”
“Robin.”
“Him again?”
“He wanted me to come over to watch a film with him tonight.” She could barely
keep from laughing. “A film? Why would I want to watch a fucking film?”
“People still watch films?” I said. “I don’t when I last –“
“I know, that’s what I said. Robin, I said, I’m sorry, but I don’t watch films.”
And then we both laughed.
It was a wonderful, unbridled obnoxiousness, impossible to suppress. And in this
feverish state, we walked out of Aspudden, down to the allotments, where we set what was
for us an impressive pace. We rustled birds out of the damp thickets, laughing at people and
ourselves, everything.
“Well, well, who do we have here”, Lidija exclaimed as we approached the bay, just
where the promenade started.
I looked up. It took me a while to locate her, but when I did, the scene was as crystal
clear as it was unpleasant. It was Evelina, my former best friend. She was crouching at the
edge of the forest, seemingly looking for something in the slushy snow. She was wearing a
coat, a shockingly grownup piece of clothing, and a white hat with woolly bobbles. A dog, a
big golden retriever, was happily pulling at his lead.
I stared at her, shell-shocked – by then I hadn’t seen her for over a year.
“She looks insane”, Lidija said. “What the hell is she wearing?”
And before I knew it, she flapped right up to us.
“My god, is it really you.”
She gave me a deliberately formal hug.
“Evelina”, I said, “hi.”
“And this is Nelly.” She steered the dog in front of her and carried on in her officious
little voice: “She actually belongs to mum and dad. I’m just here for the day, visiting. I live in
town now.”
Town. I could just picture it: some microscopic closet on the “in” street, whitewashed
floors and a posy of dried flowers on the nightstand. The thought of it almost made me burst
out in another raucous, unbecoming laughter.
“Right”, I said and composed myself as best I could. “I mean, town, wow.”
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“It’s so convenient, close to where I study and everything.” And that gave her an
excuse to launch into an endlessly detailed outline of her budding career, something about
“digital communication” and “focus on health service providers” – it all sounded so lifeless
and was sprinkled with such cryptic jargon I didn’t understand half of it. “I’ve just started an
internship at this company. I’m there until summer. It’s amazing; I learn new things every
day. So far – Nelly, Nelly!” she tugged at the lead. “And you?” she said. “What are you up to
these days?”
Things turned cold again, ice cold, just like I remembered it happening whenever
Evelina was obliged to pay attention to anything other than herself.
“Well”, I said. “Not a whole lot to be honest.”
Wide eyes, a mechanic nod. “No, sure, it’s not like you have to – “Then she blurted
out, which was not quite as remarkable as it sounds: “By the way, you’re wearing a lot of
makeup. Are you going to some kind of costume party or what?”
Costume party. This was the Evelina I knew; this had always been lurking just
beneath the poorly controlled surface: malice and insults, aimed at everything that wasn’t her
– and primarily, I realised for the first time, at everything that was me.
“Not really.” Lidija answered for us. She took a step toward Evelina, as though she
was going to give her a good shove. Then she said: “This is just our look. You see, not
everyone wants to look like you.”
The last words were uttered in a homicidal tone reminiscent of the head bitch in some
soap and for a few shaky seconds it really was as though we were actors in some scripted
showdown. Deathly silence, stiff panic. Evelina stared at us with eyes filled with equal parts
contempt and fear. She pulled on the lead again. “Nelly”, she mumbled and backed away
slowly, “Nelly, I said come here!”
And then she actually broke into a run.
“I just don’t get it”, Lidija gasped as we watched the comic scene, laughing
hysterically – Evelina frantically yanking at the dog’s lead, the dog mistaking the sudden jog
for playtime, jumping and pulling like some wild beast. “How the fuck could you ever hang
out with her?”
Indeed, how?
*
A few days later, I met up with dad. Bowing to mum’s persistence, we normally saw each
other sometime before New Year’s, always under the same ridiculous pretext of it being
Christmas and him wanting to give us our presents. The presents always consisted of a few
hundred kronor notes; the only element of suspense – if you could call it that – was guessing
how many there’d be this year. It was February before we managed to agree a time and we
both turned up late.
“A small gift”, he said and handed me a white envelope and then another one: “And
this is for your sister.”
We were in a café in the city centre, one of those overpriced chains where everything
tastes like cardboard and the staff reminded me of the girls on my literature course; pasty and
uppity in drab clothes and flats, they served us in silence.
Dad fiddled with his cup of coffee. How were we doing? How was I? Just fine?
“Sure”, I said, yawning. I felt dizzy and weird, out of place in this sober and sharply
lit environment. How long did I have to sit here? How much time did people spend in cafes?
The last few days had been so mind-boggling I could barely summon a single coherent
thought.
“And Emma?”
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“Emma’s ill.”
“Of course, yes. But otherwise? She’s still hanging in there? School is good as
usual?”
“I assume.”
He studied me. “And you both just keep getting older.”
“Dad…”
He nervously raised one hand. “I don’t mean it like that. I just mean that, well, you’re
not children anymore, are you? You certainly can’t say that. But you were once upon a time,
I’ll have you know. My god, it feels like yesterday –“
He proceeded to lumber from one memory to the next for a while, settling on one that
had been told and retold so many times it had lost all its magic: “Remember when Emma and
you carried rainwater in from the yard? And started painting the walls with it! Mum went
ballistic, the poor thing had to spend the whole evening scrubbing.” He shook his head. For a
moment he looked like he was going to burst out laughing or crying or both. “The toddler
years, those were the days. I didn’t know it back then, but they really were. Cherish the time
you’re given, I’m telling you. Because this life passes by so quickly, too quickly…”
We stared at each other. This was a sudden intimacy I didn’t quite know what to do
with.
“Sure”, I managed. And then I was silent. What were we talking about? I’d already
forgotten. I missed Lidija and Mimmi; more than anything I longed to be in Mimmi’s kitchen
and experience the warm, lovely high I’d already come to associate with it. I took a few deep
breaths and stretched. Then I heard myself say:
“I’ve a new job.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, it’s not permanent or anything, but –“
“It’s a job, that’s what matters.”
I’d assumed he was going to ask me what I was doing and for a brief second I cast
around for an answer. The sandwich shop? Something about temping as a teaching assistant
again? He’d liked that stuff about working with young people, I seemed to recall. But he
didn’t ask:
“I’m proud of you; I want you to know that. When I was like you, I mean, when I was
your age, I was all over the place. All over the place. Could barely manage to put on
matching socks. And anything beyond that, well, that was beyond me. It’s lucky I met mum,
you might say. That woman’s on top of things, that’s for sure.”
“I’m all over the place too.” I said it quietly.
He looked up from his cup. He wore that blank, vacant expression that was so typical
of him; he had no idea what I meant and wasn’t going to try to understand.
“Sure”, he said, “sure, it can be like that sometimes.”
And then we were back where we started, gestures and anecdotes so empty they were
practically abstractions. Was there not a hint of spring in the air already? It was just a shame
it wasn’t a bit warmer here. But Sweden was a fantastic country too, we had to remember
that, maybe even the best of them all. I responded with humming and mmming so flat it could
barely be taken for agreement. What was I doing here? I really shouldn’t be here.
Suddenly a shiver worked its way up my back and I started scratching my forearms.
Recently, my eczema had flared up again, white spots rising like irregular islands from a sea
of red, blushing and stinging like a minor burn injury.
“Has mum had a look at that?”
“This? It’s nothing.”
“Have her take a look at it anyway.”
“Fine.”
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And then, without really thinking about what I was doing, I pulled my sleeve down
and stood up. I wasn’t tired anymore, not in the slightest – I was alert and awake, wide awake
even.
“I’m sorry, but I have to go now”, I announced. “I have tonnes of stuff to do.”
*
Following this abrupt departure, I whirled out onto the street like I was on drugs. I didn’t
regret walking out, quite the opposite. I’d done us both a favour; these meetings were pure
agony for both of us and it was really about time someone called them off. The image of
dad’s long, bewildered face faded with each step I took and once I was heading down into the
underground, I’d already forgotten the whole thing.
While station after station rushed by, random scenes from my life passed before my
inner eye: Lidija and Mimmi and the ecstasy. And K, of course, still anonymous but
tantalising like a phantom. My life, I thought, may be immoral, but at least it was rich. I was
no longer a slacker kid, I was a stripper and a drug user and my overall trajectory pointed
steadily downward. I relished knowing that in a way I can’t even explain.
I didn’t open dad’s envelope until I was in the supermarket. There were ten notes, I
quickly established, same number as last year. I pulled out one of them and used it to buy a
Coke and a bag of peanut rings.
On the way home, I opened the bag and started munching down its contents with
childish enthusiasm. The only sound was the gravel under my feet and the lovely crunch of
snacks disintegrating between my incisors. I kept a very high pace. The air was chilly and the
sky dark. A cloud that looked like a giant horse’s torso glowed in the emptiness sky. I stared
at its intricate pattern of bright coral pink and started humming a tune. I had no idea what
song it was, but I liked it and somehow it spoke to me in this wondrous, rich world we lived
in:
And that’s what takes me hiiiigh…
Your love, it keeps me aliiiiive…
Then I spotted Siv turning into our yard.
Siv was mum’s age, divorced and our upstairs neighbour. She was also a child
psychologist, something she was fond of reminding people of. She’d written a number of
books on the subject and occasionally you’d see her on TV, doling out advice to various
viewers from talk show sofas. Her advice was always the same, banalities a monkey could
have put together (“Communicate more”, “Maybe family therapy?”); all in all it was
impossible to take her seriously, professionally speaking. She had big, frizzy hair and a round
little mouth that spewed a constant stream of various empathetic phrases that always
managed to ring completely empty. It wasn’t dad’s fumbling clichés, it was worse than that;
it was utterly insincere generosity. In other words, Siv’s interest in the world around her was
practically non-existent, but she did well, living off her reputation for compassion.
That was the long version of why I disliked her. The short one went like this: Once,
just after the divorce, when mum was tired and depressed and behind on our rent, Siv had had
the gall to try to have us evicted. Informal meetings with the chairman of the newly
established co-op where she’d anointed herself treasurer, whispering in the stairwell. Once
the rent was paid and the whole matter behind us, she immediately acted as though her role in
the drama had been forgotten: said hi when we met, asked me to give her love to mum as
usual. Which for some reason we all accepted.
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But I hadn’t forgotten. And today, when I spotted her big hair, wobbling like a
ponderous balloon in the wind, and the bike she always dragged around, come rain or shine, I
got it into my head that it was time to let her know as much. It was a sudden whim, as insane
as it was inevitable; it fluttered before me like a luminous butterfly I had to catch.
“Siv”, I called out, “hi!”
I sounded like a girl scout, unnaturally chipper and wholesome. I held the gate open
for her. Was her coat new? No? It certainly looked new! She clucked delightedly at this
before reaching for a few formalities. How was my mother? How was I? Was I surviving this
slushy winter?
“Oh sure”, I said and shot her a jaunty smile. “Just a bit stressed.”
She parked her bike in the bike rack, gave me a well-meaning but altogether vacant
look, not unlike the one she employed on TV. I hated that look; at that moment I realised just
how much I hated it. I stuck my hand in the bag of peanut rings and then said, with my mouth
full:
“I’m just heading out to do some stripping. I mean, for money.”
Out of the corner of my eye I could see her stiffen. The glare of a streetlight was
reflected in her glasses. “Pardon?”
“You heard me.” I sounded amazing, authoritative and self-assured. When we reached
the door, I added, riding the wave of new confidence. “Maybe I’ll have to fuck too. We’ll
see.”
My pulse was starting to race; my head and hairline were pounding hard. But it wasn’t
an unpleasant feeling, quite the opposite. I punched in the code and opened the door. Then I
hollered, on my way toward the stairs:
“It would do you a world of good, by the way, to fuck every once in a while!”
*
Over the next few weeks, I barely replied when spoken to at home. I stormed into my room
and then immediately back out again, to Lidija and to Aspudden, which in those days felt
bigger, more beautiful and filled with a brand new, shimmering potential. I also had more
money than I’d had in a long time (in addition to the money from dad I still had three
hundred from Mimmi), which inevitably led to orgies of consumerism. I bought sweets and
beer and gallons of fizzy drinks from the supermarket; at Guido’s we went through almost
every item on the menu several days in a row, pizza and ham toasties, ice cream and
milkshakes.
One afternoon, we even had the demented idea to pay to bowl. Neither one of us had
ever bowled before and to our endless glee the balls, which were heavier than we’d expected,
kept rolling into the gutter. In a drunken moment, we both fell over. When the staff gently but
firmly asked us to leave, we linked arms, bade them farewell and laughed our way out the
door.
But then one day, it happened to be a Sunday, I felt strangely deflated and stayed at
home. I was tired. I was hungover too, something I was old enough to consider a proper
affliction by now. The day just rolled by. In the evening, as I was eating a cheese sandwich
by my desk, it started raining. A stubborn and persistent pattering against my window until
water was running down it in little rivulets. I remember it because the sound accentuated the
impatient, restless feeling in my chest, which I’d suddenly become aware of. Then I realised
what it was. Mimmi, I thought. Where’s Mimmi?
I had a shower, made myself another sandwich. When I returned to my room, the
display on my mobile shone silvery and urgent in the gloom. The phone was on my bed and I
read the brief message practically trembling with anticipation:
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Lollo! Party tomorrow! My place. See you there?
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17
“I don’t think we’ve met, have we?”
We were in Mimmi’s kitchen. She had dark hair, was very fat and wore a black cloche
hat with an intricate feather embellishment, from under which she studied us with sleepy,
enormous eyes. He was close to six foot six, with a build like a prepubescent child, and
introduced himself as “pretty damn bipolar”. Their names were Michaela and Danny; I’d
seen them on several occasions but had never had the courage to introduce myself.
“I don’t think so.” Lidija replied for us. “Who are you? Are you a couple or what?”
“Couple?” Michaela cocked an incredulous eyebrow. “I’m sorry, who still does the
couple thing these days? We fuck sometimes, if that’s what you’re asking. But couple, no,
not in the slightest.”
I was in a good mood. Still buzzing from the invitation, I’d barged into the flat and
immediately got drunk, after which I ran around fawning and giving compliments to people I
barely knew from Adam. You had to give it a go while you had the chance, I reasoned, with
Mimmi you could never be sure when you’d be out again.
“Nice hat”, I said. “Suits you.”
“You think?” She didn’t sound overly flattered but still smiled. “I love hats, I feel
naked without one. Besides, when you’re as fat as me you have to wear something eyecatching, otherwise all people see is your weight. Now they see a hat instead, which I prefer.”
Her wonderfully deep and raspy voice had a soothing effect on me. I wondered how
old she was. Twenty-five? At least she spoke with the authority of a twenty-five-year old.
“So, I’ve been seeing you around here a lot recently.” Michaela sipped her wine. “Tell
me, how do you know Mimmi?”
“We’ve been hanging out for a while”, Lidija said.
“To be honest”, I said, “I don’t really know. She gets in touch every once in a while.”
Michaela emitted a simple, distracted laugh. “That’s what she’s like, isn’t it? Works
her way into your life, slowly but methodically. And suddenly your best friends without any
idea how it happened. Danny and I got to know her completely randomly. We were on our
way home from a party; it was five in the morning and there she was in the middle of town in
nothing but her dressing gown.”
“With all those dogs she’s always dragging around”, Danny added. He was rocking
back and forth on his stick legs, watching us with big, restless eyes.
He was drunk, I thought, maybe even high.
Michaela sighed. “Oh god yes, the bulldogs. You’ve met them, right? Claus and
Beatrix? Monsters, if you ask me, but Mimmi loves them, obviously. She was out walking
them that morning. They do suit her, you have to give her that. She was standing there in the
sunshine with them, one in each hand, like a goddess. Looked fucking transcendental. And
then she was just so nice, you know, straightforward. Stopped and chatted to us for the
longest time. Told us about all kinds of things, the dogs, her diagnoses, even about C –“
“Who’s C?” I asked.
“An old shag. The best she ever had, she told me. He’s dead now.”
“Dead?”
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“Yeah, people do die, you know?” I thought she sounded a bit condescending.
“Cancer, I think it was. She keeps his ashes in a makeup bag in the bathroom. Classic
Mimmi, right?”
Ashes in a makeup bag? Was she taking the piss? I was starting to think so.
“Come on”, I said, without concealing my irritation. “You’re joking?”
“Not at all. Ask her yourself if you don’t believe me.” Her fingers were drumming
resolutely against her wineglass. Her nails were painted dark blue.
“She loves talking about him; she can go on for hours. The only guy who understood
her, she says. Apparently he was super fit as well.” Michaela lowered her voice. “But
whatever you do, don’t ask about her mother.”
“What?” Lidija and I asked in unison, “what about her mother?”
“I actually don’t know. No one does. Except that there must be something, because
she goes mental if you ask her about it. One time, there was this girl here who happened to
find a picture of Mimmi as an infant, in her mother’s arms. She made the mistake of
interrogating Mimmi about the picture, what was her mum’s name, where did she live and so
on. You’ll rarely catch Mimmi losing her temper, but that time, oh my god. That girl was out
on her ass, put it that way.”
She laughed, a bit too gleefully for my taste. I was starting to feel uncomfortable.
What was going on here? Something about the alternating warmth and frostiness with which
Michaela delivered this strange information made me nervous.
“Are you close?” I said. “I mean, you like Mimmi, right?”
She put her nails up to the light, inspecting them fastidiously. After what must have
been at least twenty seconds of silence, she said: “I love Mimmi, unconditionally. There’s no
one like her.”
In the living room, the object of our conversation was talking to a gaggle of girls –
Rebecka and Saga, a tall, pretty brunette I knew answered to the name Patricia. Hands waved
about excitedly; judging from the snatches of conversation that reached me, they were
discussing an outsider and some sort of conflict. Words like “gross”, “money” and “clothes”,
cut through the loud music. We watched them in silence.
The Mimmi suddenly looked over at us. “Lidija! Danny!” she shouted and waved
with her whole arm. “Come here!”
*
“They’re off to the bedroom to smoke up”, Michaela said when the others had left. “You
don’t smoke, do you?”
I shook my head.
“Me neither. Messes up your lungs. My mum has stage three COPD, so I know a bit
too much about those things.”
She’d been leaning against the yellow kitchen cupboards but now she sat down at the
table. A newspaper was open on it and she started flipping through it.
“Mimmi, so goddamn ambitious, reads the paper. Isn’t that sweet?” She looked up.
“By the way, I hear you’ve been talking to K.”
I was completely out of the blue.
“You know him?” I said in a voice that instantly revealed exactly how much the
subject mortified me.
“Not really. I haven’t slept with him if that’s what you want to know. I’m not very
involved in all that.” She said it plainly, as though she made no judgement about it. “Besides,
I’m too old. He likes them young. And cute. Like you.”
“I’m not cute.”
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“Cuter than me.”
She focused on the newspaper again and there was a pause, the kind of pause that
determines whether you’re just vague acquaintances or more than that. If we kept talking
now, if either one of us said another word, we’d share something, a confidence and a
relationship. And I guess that’s what I wanted because I opened my mouth again.
“Is this common?” I asked.
“Well”, she said, still in the same unconcerned tone, “that depends on what you mean.
The girls here have their contacts. It’s K, the pedo on Eskilsvägen, the Courgette Man…”
“The Courgette Man?”
“That’s what they call him. He like courgettes, you might say. Nasty piece of work,
actually.” She sighed. “Between you and me, K is one of the better ones. Stick with him,
that’s my advice, if you’re interested.”
“Better? Better how?”
“He’s not kinky. No whips or dog collars or revolting little school uniforms in his
closet. And he never makes trouble when it comes to payment.”
Courgettes? School uniforms? I felt my stomach wriggle, as though I’d eaten a
million ants. What was this? This was the weirdest conversation I’d ever had; this was sick
and had this been a couple of weeks ago, it would have upset and scared me. But I was a
different person now, a member of a secret society, an exclusive order where different rules
applied. The world was a dangerous place, full of pitfalls and treacherous dead ends, but only
we knew that. And that thought was as enticing as a dream.
“Poor kid, you look positively sober”, Michaela exclaimed. “Are we out of wine or
something?”
She put her hand on mine, something I mistook for a come-on for a brief, confused
moment.
“Take it”, she said when I opened my hand and a familiar blue pill appeared. A
hundred times better than alcohol.”
*
Later that evening, I stumbled out onto the balcony. I was looking for Lidija, but she wasn’t
there and I was about to go back in when someone addressed me from the shadows. His name
was Johan or possibly Jonas and he was fairly good-looking. But something about him put
me off.
“Hi there”, he said.
“Hi”, I replied.
And at this point I think it’s about time I have a real go at explaining the issues I had
with men.
I suppose up until now you’ve imagined my rejection of the other sex to be a matter
of principle, almost certainly feminist. Maybe even gay – because so far I’ve been pretty
good at hinting at that kind of theme, haven’t I? But the thing is that I really wasn’t gay. On
the contrary, at this point, I considered myself as straight as Emma, to name one example. I
certainly took an interest in boys from an early age, earlier than normal, I think. As early as
preschool, I felt that first prepubescent desire, light and cool like a revelation. There was
something about their serious faces, which I perceived to be more determined than the girls’;
in them, I detected resistance and unhappiness, things I could relate to to an almost painful
degree. I didn’t understand the tantrums and the fistfights, just found them moronic, but the
way they obviously struggled to make their existence meaningful, that I understood, and on
this our shared shortcoming I built dreams, wondrous, fanciful fantasies about games we
might play together.
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And when they got older, oh god, when their boyish faces grew swarthier with
eyebrows and that special shadow under the eyes that I’ve always had a thing for, then my
fascination tipped over into what can only be called yearning. While other girls took turns
falling for the most popular guy in the class, I experienced a more general tug; all I wanted
was a tolerably good-looking creature who shared my view that the world was a hopeless
place best avoided. Holding hands and going to the cinema together was fine for other
people; like Ian Brady and Myra Hindley we’d go deep into nature instead, roll out blankets
on the ground and, high on alienation and boredom, give the world the finger, curse it for not
giving people like us a place in it. And then we’d sleep together, obviously, resignedly and
cynically, like they do in porn films. This was what I hoped for, the images in my mind. But
that’s not how it turned out, of course.
“You’re cute”, Patrik, who would become my first boyfriend, had told me. Two little
words I largely ignored, partly because I knew I wasn’t cute, partly because they’d been
delivered in that rehearsed, flat tone people use to compliment a new jacket or something. In
fact, the words, as I now know, reflected both a strict set of rules and even stricter gender
roles – a complete totalitarian gender ideology, as Elena would have put it.
As a matter of fact, “you’re cute”, pointed, to be precise, to Patrik’s own darkness,
doubt and lack of confidence, and it also pointed to a potential light in this darkness. And this
little light, he soon informed me, was – me. Which is to say that during the months we dated,
he splashed around in murky pools of cynicisms and ennui, wallowed in them even, while I
was never allowed to even dip a toe in. In practice, it went like this: he might spend a whole
evening whining about everything he thought stood between him and success: winter
depressions and tedium, hard to please parents and boring teachers. But as soon as I tried to
join in with my own bitter outbursts at this and that, he’d immediately cut me off: “I’m so
fucking glad I have you”, he’d exclaim and we’d come together in a tender kiss or whatever.
We were certainly acting out a pornographic fantasy, but it wasn’t my version, not hardcore
porn, it was softcore, in which I was cast in the role of mild nurse, full of life-giving, healing
powers.
Maybe I could still have played along, in order to continue enjoying the benefits of a
relationship, such as constant company and sex… But that was the thing. There was a reason
Lidija and I kept coming back to sex as our pivotal disappointment. It was because in sex,
we’d identified an amplified example of the dire conditions of our lives. He’d snuggle into
my breast to forget himself, maybe “use me” only to be overcome with remorse and try to
make it right. Patrik, and all the boyfriends that followed, assumed that my dissatisfaction
with our monotonous exercises in the bedroom was caused by their inherent selfishness or
predictability. But that wasn’t it. What I couldn’t bear was to be robbed of my entire identity.
I was no tender mother or muse – I was a teenager, as nihilistic and bored as they could ever
claim to be.
I gave the first few relationships a few months; the rest ended after the first shag.
Then I didn’t even need that. This was all it took, a look and a tone of voice, for me to know
for sure.
“You’re really pretty”, Johan – or was it Jonas – was saying now. He was standing
with his forearms pressed against the railing, smiling widely at me. “Why I haven’t I met you
before?”
There they were again, the eyes that looked at me as though I were the opening, the
potential light of his life.
“I think you have”, I said, “but you probably didn’t think that much of me then.
Which is actually the correct conclusion to draw now as well. I’m boring, really fucking
boring even, and definitely not someone to pin your hopes on. And now I’m going inside.”
“Wait.”
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“No.”
And then I did just that; pulled open the balcony door and slipped back inside.
*
“I barely saw you all night”, Lidija said as we were making our way home. “Where were
you?”
“Just around. I got stuck on the sofa with Michaela and Danny. What did you get up
to?”
“I was in Mimmi’s room. We played some music, smoked up a little. I never thought
I’d say this, but I think I’m starting to like Mimmi.” She smiled – but the smile was fleeting:
“Just a shame she likes the Velvet Underground.”
“What?”
“That stuff she insists on playing all the time.”
“What about it?”
“It sucks is all. The Velvet Underground sucks.”
*
When I was brushing my teeth that night, mum came into the bathroom. We’d barely seen
each other over the last two weeks and her dishevelled appearance – rumpled t-shirt and
bloodshot eyes – instantly made me uneasy.
“Where have you been?” She asked and looked at me crossly.
“Just out.”
“Sure, that you have time for.” She shoved a page torn from a newspaper at me. “But
tomorrow you are going to turn up here.”
An ad had been circled on the page. I spat out the toothpaste. “What’s this?”
“Well, it’s a job obviously. I’ve already called. All you have to do is drag yourself out
there.”
I read the ad: “SWEDAC certified garage in Årsta seeks admin.” The brief lines
described some kind of general office role: “Client contact”, “assistance”, “inventory”… It
was so incomprehensible it may as well have been written in a foreign language. The last few
lines I read out loud: “We think you’re a flexible self-starter, with a talent for teamwork and a
passion for challenges.”
I stared at her. “Oh my god”, I said. “You do get that I don’t know how to do any of
this? And I know nothing about cars.”
“Then learn. You should be capable of learning something at some point, right? That
shouldn’t be so inconceivable?”
This side of her, the barely controlled rage, as though she were the wicked stepmother
in some fairy tale rather than my mum, rarely reared its ugly head. The role was a bad fit for
her: she sounded tense and harassed, and weird lines furrowed her forehead, making her look
ever so slightly deranged.
But I didn’t feel like arguing.
“When is it?”
“Tomorrow at eight o’clock.”
“Eight? That’s too bloody early.”
“Early? That’s when normal people get to work. You know, the ones who aren’t out
until three in the morning.” She pursed her lips into a surly little cone. She was done talking
about this and so she turned and left the room.
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I washed my face and studied myself in the mirror. I looked tired and apathetic. Was
it obvious what I’d been up to? Maybe, but it didn’t matter; mum knew nothing about drugs,
least of all about ecstasy. I turned the tap off and put my face into a towel. Then I pulled out
my phone and set my alarm for seven.
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18
When my alarm went off the next morning, I was so tired I just sat on my bed for the longest
time. My head was spinning and my chest hurt. Getting to Årsta in this state would be awful,
the worst thing I’d had to do in a long while. Would I even make it? In the end, though, I
pulled myself upright.
On my way out into the hallway, I spotted Emma. To my surprise she was crouched
over her bed in a strange, helpless position, with one hand pressed to her chest as though
she’d just been told someone had died.
“Hi”, I said. “Aren’t you going to school?”
“No.” Her voice was faint but grave. “Not today.”
I barely recognised her; she had no makeup on and her hair hung limply from a centre
parting. Sharp sunlight filtered through the slats of the blinds, etching dramatic lines across
her face – she looked like a nun or an anaemic maiden in some medieval tale.
I lingered on the threshold. “What’s the matter? Did something happen?”
“You could say that. I went to see the guidance counsellor yesterday. She wanted to
talk to me about my future. My grades –“
“Your grades”, I said. “But you’ve got fantastic grades?”
She shook her head, making her hair settle all crisscrossed under her chin. “Not
anymore. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m so tired all the time. Look at those books
over there”, she pointed to a sizeable pile on her desk: English B and Mathematics D, loads
of library books. “I’m meant to be done with all of them. The national tests are on Tuesday,
the big essay should have been handed in ages ago. But I’ve barely written a line. I just don’t
have the energy, it’s like I can’t do anything anymore.”
Emma in a tailspin and her grades in freefall? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing –
she might as well have confessed she was dealing drugs in school.
I didn’t know what to say. “But”, I managed, “what does that mean? What about
Beckmans?”
That Emma was applying to study fashion or design at Beckmans in Stockholm was
something she’d made clear as early as last summer. It was obviously not without risk to aim
for a career in a crowded field like design, but as she’d put it: If anyone can make it, it’s me.
Lately, she’d started talking about it as a foregone conclusion. Her portfolio – a set of
experimental portraits of her best friends – was already finished, her future artistic visions –
“lots of colour” – were reiterated to anyone who could bear to listen. And more and more
frequently she’d bring the book – a large notepad crammed with clippings from various
magazines, which served as a continual source of inspiration – to the dinner table.
“I tried to talk to her about that”, she said. “But she didn’t want to listen. She just
went on and on about me having a look at alternatives and gave me a bunch of brochures
about some nursing programme at Karolinska. The world always needs more nurses, she said.
It was unbelievable. It didn’t matter what I said; she couldn’t’ stop waving those brochures
around.” Only now did she rise from her bent-over position. Her face was ashen. “A nurse”,
she said again. “I don’t want to be a nurse. Why would I? Because mum is?”
“Have you told her about this?”
“They called here. Why else do you think she’s so pissed? She was crushed, went at
me all night. According to her, I’ve, like, missed my one chance.” She was crying openly
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now. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “It’s like I’m not worth anything anymore”, she
snivelled. “Seriously, one bad term and you lose everything. It’s so bloody mean, so unfair.”
I’d never seen Emma like this. I’d seen her cry, of course, simple, dutiful tears at
Nan’s funeral and in conjunction with some breakup with a boyfriend she didn’t really have
any feelings for. But this Emma was breaking down for real. She was, I realised, seriously
worried about the turn her life had taken. And when I imagined her in an oversized nurse’s
uniform for a second, with her shiny hair in some cheerless ponytail, as tired and worn-down
as mum, I was too.
For a moment, I honestly thought I’d do anything to get her into design school. She
belonged there, in town, among the eccentric, modern, ambitious weirdos, not out here in
Aspudden.
Suddenly she let out a bitter little laugh. “Sandy’s the it thing now”, she said. “Did
you know that? She’s the new star.”
“Who? The new girl?”
She nodded. “The teachers love her. Her essay’s already been selected as the best in
our year. She even got a scholarship.”
“Scholarship?” I looked at Emma – and then, from out of nowhere, I raised my voice.
“Emma, listen. Do you really want to be like that? Do you want scholarships? Stand there at
graduation next to the head teacher, wagging your tail? Do you?”
I sounded so confident, persuasive even. For the first time ever, I thought, I was
acting like the older sister I actually was. “Do you know what you should do?” I said. “You
should keep doing your thing. Fuck her, and fuck them. What do they know? They know
nothing. They know nothing about you, do they?”
She stared at me wide-eyed, expressionless. We didn’t usually talk to each other this
way, never had. Had I gone too far?
“Emma –“
“No.” She shifted to get more comfortable, drying her tears on her sleeve. Then she
said in a determined voice: “You’re right. They know nothing. They’ve no fucking idea.”
We looked at each other. It was our first ever genuinely sisterly moment, or at least it
felt like it was, and I was suddenly eager to make it last, to take a seat, talk about everything,
like sisters do. But it was half seven already and I was in a hurry.
“Hey, I have to go, mum’s making me apply for jobs again.” I rolled my eyes. “A
garage in Årsta. Super exciting.”
“Yeah, I heard”, she said empathetically.
“It’ll be fine. And you’ll be fine too. But snap out of it, okay? You don’t want to end
up like me, do you? You don’t want to be some mechanic or whatever.”
She smiled at me, one of her many measured, well-mannered smiles; friendly and
jovial, to show that she appreciated my attempt to cheer her up, but still controlled enough
not to risk hurting me. For the first time ever, I realised I liked that smile; it was intelligent; it
was one of the things she had that I didn’t and it would ultimately take her somewhere.
“Hey”, she said almost inaudibly, “thanks.”
*
“To be honest, I’m not sure what a little girl like you is doing in a garage”, said the man in
blue coveralls and yellow visor cap. “But then again, who am I to say no to a bit of female
pulchritude?”
His name was Roland, he must have been well over six feet tall and he talked in a
persistent, booming voice that made him seem a bit like a drunken Father Christmas. I’d
fallen asleep on the bus on the way there; my face had been wedged between the seat and the
113
window for so long my temples ached and I had an imprint on my face. Now I was here,
yawning and disoriented, subtly touching the dents to assess their severity whilst pretending
to listen to my guide.
“And these are the technicians that perform the inspections”, he chuckled and
gestured to the pairs of legs sticking out from under the cars. “You never really see any other
part of them during the day.” He laughed heartily at this; actually, he cracked up at every
single thing he said.
The place was smaller than I’d imagined – it basically consisted of one sizable room.
Cars everywhere, a stereo in one corner that played soft music and emitted a diffuse
humming noise. Not a spectacular environment in any way, but at that point, in the state I was
in, I probably couldn’t have felt more lost if they’d dropped me on a space station.
I was shown around at a brisk pace, informed about the history of the company, its
turnover and staff – information that went in one ear and out the other. Suddenly, we stopped
in the middle of the room and he pointed to the faded black and yellow lines running across
the stone floor.
“We were thinking you could start by topping up these lines here. How does that
sound?”
“I’ve never painted anything before.” I sounded completely out of it.
“You can hold a brush though, right? Don’t worry, this is a garage, it doesn’t have to
be perfect. It’s fine if it’s not a Picasso if you know what I mean.” He grinned, patted the
hood of a nearby car, a small Audi. “Robban! Say hi to the new girl!”
The man underneath the car was lying on a board with wheels and now he rolled into
view. He wasn’t much older than me, blond and fairly good-looking. But he had headphones
in, was busy with his own thing, and we barely had time to say hi before he rolled back in
under the car.
“Don’t let them scare you”, Roland continued. “The boys don’t bite. We’re decent
around here, I want you to know that. No pervy stuff, no pinups in the bathroom. We don’t do
that kind of thing here and we’re proud of it.”
The more he spoke to me, the weirder I felt. But not the way you might be thinking;
despite the constant references to my gender and my slight build, I felt less and less like a girl
and more and more like an alien, a strange creature who’d ended up here through unfortunate
happenstance and would soon be yanked away again just as abruptly. “So”, he said finally
and slapped the wrench he was carrying against his palm. “How about it, love?”
Well, yeah, how about it? I shoved my hands in my pockets and then I blurted out,
why I have no idea: “So, where do you guys eat?”
He laughed again. “Hungry already? Come on, I’ll show you.”
He led me through a mucky hallway and pulled open a door to a tiny kitchen.
Drooping plants, wax table cloths. An older woman with red hair was leaning over a table
with a rag.
“Barbro”, he boomed, “meet our newest recruit!”
The woman turned to us and let the rag drop. She was tall and skinny, dressed in jeans
and a t-shirt with the company logo.
“Well hello to you”, she said. “Welcome.” She smiled, kindly and sincerely – an
unexpected warmth amid the pervasive alienation.
“Barbro’s our den mother, you might say. She keeps track of all the practical stuff,
swipe cards, keys, things like that. And you’ll be using the phone quite a bit so I’ve told her
to hook you up with your own.”
I thought she shot me a pitying look. That settled it; this place was horrible, it really
was and I was going to get out of here as quickly as I could and never return.
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The tour ended where it had started, outside, in the driveway, a bare, ugly yard. Mud
seeped out of cracks in the asphalt; next to the fence lay a toppled barrel, painted black with a
neon yellow sticker. It looked like the apocalypse, a post-nuclear war hell. I kicked a rock; it
skittered across the ground, bounced and landed over by the barrel.
I was just about to say thanks and leave when he grabbed my hand and began shaking
it violently.
“Well, this went great”, he boomed. “The job’s yours. Congratulations.”
It took me a moment to grasp what had just happened.
“What?” I stammered. “I thought that… You have other applicants, don’t you?”
“No more interviews. This isn’t Idol, honey. If you show up, you speak Swedish and
you behave okay, you get the gig. No fuss, that’s how we do things.”
My stomach contorted in a mild cramp. This wasn’t how things usually went; this
really wasn’t how things usually went. You were called to an interview, you didn’t get the
job. At best you ended up on a list of back-ups and got contacted later on to fill in on
weekends. I didn’t want a job and I definitely didn’t want this job.
“Let me give you this as well.” He put his hand in the breast pocket of his coveralls
and handed me a grubby business card. “Call if there’s any problems. Otherwise I’ll see you
in ten days. We start at half six.”
“Half six? That’s early.”
He burst out laughing, a loud, jarring dissonance that was more like an asthma attack
and scared me half to death.
“Well, love, this is a garage, not a tea party. Around here we work hard!”
*
The garage was located in the middle of a deserted industrial estate; nothing but parking lots
and bunker-like buildings with tin roofs that glinted in the sun. Big stones lined the potholed
road. I walked for a while, breathing in the damp morning air, and suddenly the events at the
garage came back to me with a new clarity. Had I actually promised to turn up? It was absurd
and there was no chance in hell I was going to. Should I head back right now and tell him?
I should’ve done – but instead I called Lidija.
“Morning”, I said. “What are up to?”
She replied in a groggy, faint voice. “What, is that you?”
“Meet up soon?”
“Yeah, yeah. But later, it’s not even –“
“It’s past nine.”
“Later, Lollo, later.”
I guessed it would be another few hours before I could hope to coax her out, but I
didn’t feel like going home. Unsure of what to do next, I sat down on a bench at the edge of
the industrial estate. Out here, the sky was blue and the air heavy with sweet, earthy smells.
Tender vegetation sprouted around my feet; coltsfoot and scilla; a handful of daring buds had
unfurled their purple and white petals.
I tilted my head back and closed my eyes. A flock of birds swept by above me,
screeching aggressively. Was it spring already? It hit me that I’d no idea what day it was. I
didn’t even know what month.
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PART IV
116
19
Notwithstanding my dazed state, the incident at the garage stuck with me. On the bus ride
home, I fell asleep again and the whole thing was replayed, but now even more absurdly. I
was dragged back into the garage and the tiny kitchen, where there was a cleaning cupboard.
This was my new home, my guide announced, there should be some hot pockets in the
freezer. No, I said. Yes, he replied with a laugh that was piped out of some speaker system
and quickly became duplicated and ended in a jarring, drawn-out sound: Yeshahahaaa…
The bus slowed down and sunlight cut through my jumbled subconscious. I sat up,
staring out the window in confusion. A square of sunlight fell onto a whitewashed facade.
The bay windows, the cracked pavements. It took me a while to realise where I was, but
when I did, the view was blinding, overwhelming: Aspudden, my Aspudden. I was still here
and nowhere else, and I would always come back here.
The rest of the week was characterised by a happy feeling of still-unhampered
freedom; walks out to Vinterviken with Lidija, pizza several days in a row at Guido’s. And
the parties, the never-ending parties at Mimmi’s where we were always welcome now and
where things were always happening, things that are probably important to this story but that
I can’t recall now.
But then there was one night, it happened to be Mimmi’s birthday, her twenty-second.
People had already split into chattering groups and spread out all the way into the hallway
when Lidija and I arrived. Danny was about to demonstrate a party trick – lighting a match on
his front teeth – to a riveted audience. Behind him, I spotted Nicole trying to wiggle her foot
free of a stubborn trainer.
We ended up in the kitchen, where Mimmi was holding court. The punch, we just had
to try the punch! she hollered when she saw us and pointed excitedly to a dark purple witch’s
brew, complete with bobbing bunches of black and red currants, sitting in the middle of the
table. And then she squeezed onto the same chair as me.
“And how do you like my demure birthday ensemble?” She ran a hand over her dress,
which, of course, was anything but demure. In fact, it was an enormous number, all lace and
tulle in layer after layer, which made her look like a cross between a Barbie and the Bride of
Frankenstein. Before I had time to reply, she carried on. “By the way, I haven’t had time to
have a proper chat with you in days. Tell me, what have you been up to?”
She was sitting very close to me and my eyes strayed to her neck. Tendons tensed
under her skin, relaxed and contracted once more. There was something special about that
area right below the ear, both fragile and throbbing with life… I liked it, and I liked Mimmi. I
actually probably really liked Mimmi –“
“Hey, sweetie.” She winked at me. “Go on.”
I looked up. What was the question again? What had I been up to lately? “Weeell –“ I
cleared my throat – “nothing in particular”, I said. And then I remembered: “Or actually,
yeah. I applied for a job a while ago.”
“A job?” She lit up, I thought. “What kind of job, if I might ask?”
“At a garage in Årsta. It proper sucks, I’m not going to take it, that’s for sure.”
Punch arrived in plastic cups. Mimmi handed me one and raised another to her lips.
“Sucks how?” she said with interest. “Did they feel you up?”
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The question was so unexpected I started laughing. “What? No, they didn’t. Not at
all.”
“You’re lucky.” Her eyes, big and grey, fixed me solemnly. “Where Becky works,
they’re always touching her. She’s beside herself when she comes here at night. Sometimes
she just sits down and cries.”
At this point, all other conversations petered out and everyone turned their attention to
us. We were both looking at the object of our discussion, the brunette member of the high
schoolers, as they were known, the trio of girls, each with her own distinct hair colour (dark,
platinum and pink), who were found by Mimmi’s side as reliably as the dogs. She was sitting
on the kitchen counter with arms and legs firmly crossed. Now she nodded cautiously to
confirm the claim.
“Where do you work?” I asked.
“A café in town.” I realised I’d never heard her speak before. Her voice was deep and
masculine as though she’d been smoking for years, which she probably had. “It’s okay,
really. I like the other girls, we’re all going to Crete together this summer.” She lit up for a
second. “But the owners are morons. Last week they tried to make me have group sex in the
staff room.”
Group sex? I thought about the countless scenes I had watched in porn films, adult
and advanced, often violent.
I stared at her. “That’s fucking sick”, I said. “Why don’t you quit?”
“Yeah, I will. I mean, that’s definitely decided. I just want to earn a bit more for the
trip and stuff.” She fell silent, started shifting uncomfortably.
“It can be complicated”, Mimmi said. “Sometimes you just need the money, end of
story. Becky’s mum pockets her student grant.”
I thought about the money I managed to get my hands on from time to time, from
mum and dad and relatives on birthdays and high holidays, always too little, insufficient
amounts, but still money and somehow I muddled through. Then I looked at Becky and felt
acutely uneasy. Could she be telling the truth? It was like when I watched something scary on
TV as a child (animal cruelty and child murderers) and immediately wanted mum to assure
me that these were things that could never exist in real life. I waited for someone to say that
this was, if not a joke then at least an unfortunate and temporary circumstance, that the whole
thing would be sorted soon and so on.
But no one did. Instead Lidija raised her voice from her permanent stakeout by the
kitchen fan in the corner:
“I know what you mean”, she said and put her cigarette in the ashtray. “I did this
internship after high school. A shop halfway to Liljeholmen, you’ve probably been past it
loads of times. Sold all kinds of office supplies, plastic folders and binders and shit like that.
It was there a week maybe and then the manager’s son came at me, asking all these questions,
what was I doing after work, did I have a boyfriend. And it went downhill from there. One
time he showed me his dick.”
“Fuck.”
An agitated, unanimous murmur erupted. The subject had clearly been discussed
many times before, so often there wasn’t much to add beyond the cursing. The same sentence
was repeated several times – I remember it because I heard it expressed in exactly the same
emphatic, bitter way by Elena a number of years later: “Swine is what they are, real fucking
swine!”
I stared at Lidija. I knew about the internship, but the rest was news to me.
“You’ve never told me that”, I said.
She shrugged. “What was I supposed to say? That the manager’s kid grabbed my ass
on Friday afternoons? What difference does it make? They do that everywhere, don’t they?
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To be honest I thought you’d figured it out.” She lit another cigarette. “Anyway, I got fed up
and left in the end. It pissed mum off, obviously. We didn’t talk to each other for ages; we
were still on bad terms when they moved back to Belgrade.”
“Didn’t you tell her what happened?” Mimmi asked.
Lidija shook her head. “I probably should’ve, but then she would’ve been even
angrier, might have gone to the police. Mum’s like that, makes a big deal of everything and I
just felt that would be too much on top of everything. I just kind of wanted to get away.”
No one said anything. Cups were topped up, someone opened a window. A breath of
wind, faint as a whisper, made the curtain bulge and cool, autumnal air flowed into the room.
“You should always talk about things.” It was Mimmi. “About everything. Secrets are
not good. They eat you up.”
These words had clearly been said before and people had rallied around them, like a
motto. Cups were raised in its honour, a toast was drunk. You should always talk about
things, people echoed, again and again.
I needed the loo and got to my feet.
The whole time this was happening, Nicole had huddled near the food cupboard,
listening to us, stock-still and silent. Her hair was shorter now and her face was covered in a
thick layer of foundation. The liberally applied cosmetic was an attempt to camouflage the
rash on her cheeks but if anything it had the opposite effect; it blended with the pustules, and
produces a lot of fluid.
Pushing my way past, I grazed her arm and looked at her, almost pointedly. And you, I
thought, what’s your secret?
*
On my way through the hallway, I bumped into a familiar face from my school days.
I was Adrienne, a miserable little thing with an IQ well below average and the air of a
sleepy child or something along those lines. Even though we’d been in the same class in both
middle and upper school, I couldn’t recall speaking to her a single time. Adrienne was quiet
and weird and had distinguished herself in school mainly through her frequent absences.
Constant tardiness turned into sick leave after sick leave – in ninth grade she disappeared for
good. There was a rumour she’d become a heroin addict or possibly been married off.
Someone claimed she’d bought an annual pass to Gröna Lund and spent the rest of the term
in the amusement park, going on rides.
Now here she was, like a barrier cutting me off from the bathroom. She was short,
nearly four inches shorter than me, and had a square little head that looked like it was
attached directly to her shoulders.
“Hey there”, she drawled. She was absolutely wasted, which for some reason made
me sober up.
“Hey there”, I said.
“I’m… drunk.”
“Yeah, I can tell.”
“There was this punch” – she swallowed a hiccough – “but it’s run out now…” For a
moment she lost her train of thought and stared into space helplessly. Then she found it
again: “They had this punch before. It was so good, I couldn’t help myself. By the way”, she
said and poked her finger in my tummy, “I recognise you.”
“Mm”, I said and pushed her finger aside. “We were in the same class for six years.”
“Right… yeah. I knew it was something.”
Awkward silence.
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“Well, I wasn’t there that much”, she said. “Barely at all actually. It was so fucking
boring. Don’t you think school was boring?”
“Sure”, I replied, suddenly wanting to give her some friendly affirmation, “it was.
Fucking boring.”
“I hated it. Couldn’t take it.” She peered thoughtfully into her plastic cup, as though
she were hoping to find something in there. Then she brightened: “Do you know what I did
instead? I went to Gröna Lund, rode the Giant Drop every day.”
So that rumour had been true, I thought. And realised this was the only thing I’d ever
wanted to know about her.
I smiled uncomfortably, looking around. How long was I going to have to put up with
this mind-numbing person?
“Hey, are you listening or what?”
She glared at me.
“What?”
“Pretty cool, huh? The L.A. thing?”
She told me the insipid story again, for what was probably the third time; something
about going abroad, a half-sister in Los Angeles she was welcome to visit any time she
wanted, in fact, she was practically there already. She prattled on, oblivious to how bored I
was. “You heard, right?” she slurred. “I’m going to become an actress in L.A. A famous
actress.” But I’d stopped listening, and my mmming was completely detached.
At long last, Danny appeared behind me.
“In a partying mood tonight?” he said and fixed me with his big, intensely green eyes.
He took my hand, pressing a small bag into it.
“Absolutely”, I replied.
*
It was close to seven in the morning when I tumbled through the front door, dizzy and
drained but still relatively high. To my horror, mum was standing there in the gloom, fully
dressed, on her way to the hospital. When she saw me she stiffened.
“And where have you been?” she said in a lethal voice. “You’re supposed to be at
work right now.”
Work? It took me several seconds before I realised what she meant. The garage. It
seemed so long ago, almost like a whole different life.
I attempted some reply, a lie most likely, but she cut me off before I could get
anywhere:
“They just called. They were wondering why you hadn’t shown up.”
“What do you mean called?” I said. “I didn’t give them my number.”
“No, but I gave them mine.” She made a sweeping gesture, accidentally knocking
down her purse which was sitting on the dresser; its contents – keys and lipstick, pens and
coins – rolled out across the gravelly hallway floor. The sight of this pushed her over the
edge. She took a few ragged breaths and then exploded: “Who do you think you are? Do you
have any idea how hard I work every day to support you? Do you know how much you cost!”
She was screaming at the top of her lungs but her voice was cracking and it sounded
like she was about to start crying any second. She was as sad as she was furious; realising this
made me so uneasy I instinctively started backing away in the direction of my room.
“I’m sorry”, I mumbled without looking at her, “but I can’t deal with this right now.”
“And you think I can? Deal with you! You think everyone can just deal with
everything, don’t you?”
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Her voice cracked again. She coughed and cleared her throat, continuing to shout after
me: “I’ve had enough of you! Do you hear me! Enough!”
Just as I was about to open the door to my room, something hit the wall and thudded
to the floor in front of me. It was the pink teddy bear, the one mum had been given by a
patient last year. Now it lay face down on the floor, its bow askew: futile proof of our
dysfunctional relationship.
Oh my god, I thought. Since when do we throw things in this house?”
I stepped over the teddy and slammed my door shut behind me.
*
I don’t know how long I’d been asleep when a knock on my door woke me, but it was getting
dark outside and I wasn’t the least intoxicated anymore, quite the opposite. I shuffled to the
door like a zombie.
Emma was standing outside.
“Are you okay?” She was my bright and bushytailed opposite, rosy-cheeked and
wide-eyed. Her arms were full of beauty products.
“What’s all this?” I said groggily. When I moved my mouth I realised a string of
saliva had dried on my cheek.
“For you. It’s makeup and some skin care stuff. As a thank you for the other day.
You’re completely right about me doing my own thing. I’ve been thinking about it since we
talked, that I can’t let myself be affected by others like that. I already feel better. I’m going to
sort my life out now, properly. I started last night by cleaning my room. Well, cleaning it out,
you might say.”
I stared at her and the things she was clutching: bottles and tubes and frosted jars. I
picked up one of the jars; it was lotion from Clinique. The label read: Repairwear Intensive
Night Cream.
“Emma, this is very cool of you, really”, I said and handed the jar back. “But I don’t
actually think I need any of it.”
She threw me a doubtful glance. “Lollo, come on. Do you think I’m an idiot? Don’t
you think I know you go in my room sometimes, to borrow stuff? Now you won’t have to.”
She raised one hand in a conciliatory gesture before I could protest again. “Here, just
take it.”
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20
What was I going to do now? It was well past midnight and I was back on Mimmi’s balcony.
I was relatively sober (for once), and I had gone over alone (also unusual), because the flat
was one big cloud of smoke and my head was pounding. Mum’s distraught outburst in the
hallway kept coming back to me, her puffy eyes, saliva spraying everywhere. I’d never seen
her like that and had no idea what it meant. I was in trouble, that’s what it felt like. Could I
even go home and face her after this? It seemed unlikely.
I breathed in the damp spring air through my nostrils and rubbed my eyes. Below the
balcony was a tree-lined footpath, soft and enigmatic in the light of sporadic streetlamps. I
watched the dots of light, white and sci-fi-like in the shadowy, velveteen landscape, as
though I thought they might show me the right way. This might not be the end of the road, I
thought to myself, if I got my act together right now. Maybe I could find a summer job? Lots
of people did after all, even people in my own, amoral circle.
Summer job – the term alone sounded like a blissful dream, an unexpected escape like
the door to Narnia, with nothing but idyll waiting on the other side. My head instantly filled
with images, each happier than the next: sun and ice cream stands, girls in worn, grassstained dungarees…
Then the balcony door opened. It was the high schoolers, slinking out as one. We said
hi and I decided to head back inside when I heard his moniker mentioned behind me, first
once, then again. That name, it haunted me.
“I stopped, interrupting them:
“This Courgette Man” – I said it straight out – “who is he anyway?”
All three of them stared at me. Was I involved in this? I could tell from their looks
that they weren’t sure, but we were friends now and for some reason I was confident they’d
tell me.
Becky responded first, in her typical, terse way:
“It’s just this old guy, he lives in Mälarhöjden.”
“Yeah”, piped in Nadja, the girl with the pink hair, “he’s disgusting, keeps this
twisted little girl’s room in his basement, even though he lives alone.”
At which point the blonde, Saga, who was the youngest but also the least timid,
added: “It’s like a film, loads of stuffed animals and cushions and all that crap. You can just
see him abducting someone.”
I stood with my back to the balcony door, contemplating what they’d said for a long
while. On second thought I must have been a bit tipsy, otherwise I wouldn’t have asked the
next question:
“Do you sleep with him?”
And I guess they must have been too or they would hardly have been so direct:
“Absolutely not, we just take his money!”
*
Of course nothing came of my plan of getting my act together and finding a summer job or
any of that. Instead, my story at this point becomes shrouded in a kind of fog, narcotic, warm
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and mollifying. In other words, the following episodes took place under the influence, to the
point where you’d be right to question the veracity of, if not all of it, at least large chunks.
But let’s start from the beginning.
To avoid bumping into mum again, I did my best to spend as little time as possible in
the flat. In the mornings, I cautiously listened for noises on the other side of the door, and I
never returned at night until well after midnight, taking my shoes off in the stairwell,
negotiating the front door with the caution of a burglar and tiptoeing all the way to my room
without so much as using the bathroom. The strategy worked better than expected; a week
passed without me seeing mum at all, then two and three.
I think Lidija and I got naked for K again during this period, but I’m not entirely sure.
What I do know is that we chatted, because I remember him asking how I was doing and me
replying that things were better. Which was true, things were suddenly feeling a lot better. I
wore a lot of makeup, tight clothes and more often than not I sat around in Mimmi’s
cramped, cosy kitchen, to which scores of girls made pilgrimage, day and night.
But the main reason for my newfound wellbeing was none of those things; Danny had
scored a large amount of what he called “stuff”, and a few of us were there in the sunshine on
the balcony when he pulled out the envelope, grinned triumphantly and held up the contents
between his long, nicotine-stained fingers. Miniscule crystals, white and yellow – it looked a
bit like grimy bath salts.
“I am not”, I said, “taking that.” But my resistance immediately flickered like a naked
flame in the wind: “What is it anyway?”
“MDMA, the most important component in ecstasy. The rest is just filler, really. This
is the good shit.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“Not really.”
Soon, we were sprawled out in a Y-formation on the balcony floor, breathing heavily:
“This is good.”
“Fucking good.”
It was a fantastic feeling of being connected, to them, to the universe itself. I put my
palms against the cool concrete and closed my eyes. It was as though the laws of physics had
been suspended, as though I were in direct contact with the Earth and could feel it spinning
underneath me. From under my drooping eyelids, I saw glimpses of Aspudden, glittering
impressions of the place that was mine and that I would never leave: roofs and soft treetops,
clouds moving swiftly and silently across the pale blue sky like in a time-lapse clip. I was
capitulating to something and this something had to be extraordinary, something I had been
waiting for without knowing it.
This must be life. Constant motion, constant motion…
*
It was a time of no limits, dreamlike and surreal, and for obvious reasons I can only describe
it through a collage of bizarre, disjointed images. There was the pool party when someone
had dragged an inflatable pool out onto the balcony, in which we soaked for hours without
uttering a single sentence sensible enough to write down, and there was the “Easter party”, a
chaotic event characterised by dance and music, though its relation to Easter remained a
mystery. “Mimmi, what are you playing?” Danny had hollered through a bombastic
soundscape of trumpets and drums. “Don’t tell me it’s jazz.” Which made her come out of the
kitchen, grinning broadly and announcing: big band! This evening requires it, don’t you
think?”
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In the bathroom mirror, I met my bleary gaze; my pasty face, saggier and more
hollow with each passing day, grinned back before I groped my way back out. Yes, if there’s
one thing I’ll always remember from this time, it’s the ordeal it was to move from one point
to another, bodies everywhere and furniture and spilled puddles, all looming before me like
intricate obstacles in a video game.
One time, I tripped over a pair of legs by the living room table and found Danny
underneath it, wild-eyed and confused. He sat up, bumping his head hard – and saluted me.
Another time I had my face in a planter. “Why the hell are you standing there like that for?”
Lidija hissed and tugged at my sleeve. From the other end of the room, I heard Mimmi’s
riotous laughter: “I agree, Lollo, isn’t my new begonia amazing?”
*
The spectacles, each more elaborate than the next, was one thing.
But there was also a sexual component to the drug highs that I still haven’t really
mentioned. It wasn’t something we talked about when we were sober – quite the opposite in
fact; the prevailing opinion was that MDMA didn’t work that way. “It kind takes you beyond
that”, people said, for instance, and “It makes you complete in yourself.” One time, I
overheard one of the high schoolers try to convince her boyfriend over the phone that it was a
good idea for her to go home with two guys for a night of drugs. It was fine, she assured him,
because it wasn’t like alcohol; it was completely different. Which, granted, was true: MDMA
was different. Unlike alcohol, no lowered inhibitions or awkward hitting on people, nothing
like that. This was an aphrodisiac of a more theoretical and abstract sort, an inducer of
dreams and fantasies. But what is more potent than imagination, right?
There was this one night at Mimmi’s. Naked and high, were all sitting in a circle on
the floor. I don’t know whose idea it had been for us to take our clothes off; maybe it was just
an effect of the hot flashes increasingly brought on by the drug. I was leaning against a
sharply angular radiator, staring at my white limbs. Normally, the sight of my own body
provoked a series of contradictory responses in me; I liked my legs, which were strong and
supple and somehow belonged to me more than the other parts, but I genuinely disliked other
bits: my arms, which were too thin; my breasts, which were way too small. My posture was
good, pretty good anyway. But I was too pale, almost blue, really.
But in the state I was in, it was as though my reservations melted away. For the first
time I thought I was actually attractive. Not beautiful necessarily, but wiry and fit like the
girls on the school football team, whom I’d always secretly admired.
“You’ve got a nice body, Lollo”, Mimmi said.
“You think?”
“Absolutely, boyish and really attractive. I love boyish girls’ bodies, did I never tell
you that? They’re the sexiest thing in the world.”
Normally, a comment like that would have made me severely embarrassed. But not
now. “You can have it”, I said, “if you want.”
I was completely sincere. I wanted to take her in my arms and make love to her, make
love to all of them, in fact. But I was high and unable to so much as touch anyone. And
everyone else was too. Instead we sat there, on our own, letting the waves of orgiastic
pleasure wash over us to the sound of a collective, drawn-out moan.
Lidija was lying next to me.
“Hey”, I drawled, “you okay?”
“What do you think”, she said, “couldn’t fucking be better.”
Her eyes were only half open, brown crescents looking at me from under shiny
eyelids. There was nothing boyish about Lidija; with her prominent collar bones, hips and
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thighs she looked like a goddess, a washed-up siren, tall and shimmering in the half-light. I
felt an overwhelming impulse to pull her to me – it came out of nowhere. And so I put my
hand on her hip.
It was an insignificant moment; I don’t think the others even noticed it happening.
Was that when we fell apart? Or was it much later?
She stared at me. It was not an enthusiastic look and I immediately retracted my hand.
*
When I met up with Lidija the next day, she was upset.
“You were such a loser yesterday, do you know that?”
“What?” I said, stunned.
“Are you some kind of dyke, or what?” She sounded both angry and disgusted. “Be a
dyke then for all I care, but don’t go feeling me up on the sly.”
“But I thought – “ I could feel my neck and face blushing furiously and my words
wouldn’t come out right: “No, I’m not. We were just playing. It was –“
“We sure as fuck weren’t.” An angry crease had appeared between her eyebrows.
“From now on you keep your fantasies to yourself, okay? And get a grip. You’re acting like
an idiot these days, are you aware of that? Fawning over Mimmi and her posse all the time. I
can’t stand it. There’s nothing worse than dumb chicks. I thought you were supposed to be
smart? So be smart.”
We were in the middle of Aspudden, just outside the supermarket. It was a dreary
day: grey, sterile and odourless. I didn’t know what to say. Lidija’s accusations seemed
completely sincere. What did this mean?
Suddenly, a violent coughing fit shook her. “I’m actually not feeling great”, she said
grimly. “I think I’m going to go back home.”
*
Many years ago, when Viveca’s alcoholism was at its most severe, mum attended family
group meetings organised by Alcoholics Anonymous. For a few weeks, she came home later
than usual and lugged around workbooks and worksheets, which she studied zealously, sitting
on the balcony, wrapped in a cloud of smoke.
Once or twice, I leafed through those workbooks, mostly because I was still in the
habit of leafing through things back then. One type of diagram kept recurring in the materials,
a Jellinek Curve, named for its inventor, an American psychologist and pioneer within the
field of alcohol research. The curve, which consisted of a set of points and described the
progression of alcohol abuse, left an indelible impression on me. Everything about Viveca
suddenly made sense and it was all connected, the outbursts and the violent crying fits and
the rumpled clothes. There was nothing inexplicable, nothing mysterious – she was simply a
woman progressing toward chronic alcoholism. That was all.
What I didn’t understand then, however, but which I now know, is this: you can
describe all of life that way, with points and curves that tie things together into bigger, more
comprehensible images. All these seemingly independent events are in fact clear warning
signs of where you are headed, if only you’d choose to see them. It can be an unexpected
phone call or a row, whatever. That Lidija walked out on me that morning was, of course, one
of those signs. She’d never interrupted a day with me like that, much less yelled at me. But
did I interpret it that way, like a decisive event and a reason to take stock of my situation?
No. Five minutes later, I could barely remember what she’d been upset about. Something
about me being a lesbian? But I wasn’t a lesbian, I concluded, and so I proceeded instead to
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worrying about my practical situation. What was I going to do now, with Lidija angry and
mum even more furious? I hadn’t spent time at home during the daylight hours in weeks.
Where could I go?
In the end, I decided to go home. Luckily, no one was around. I went into my room,
sat down on the bed, lay down after a while. If I was lucky, I’d fall asleep before mum got
back, maybe I could even sleep my way through the rest of the day.
But it had only just gone four when I heard her come through the door with the muted,
methodical movements so typical of her. And minutes later, she appeared in my doorway.
“Well now”, she said, “so you’ve deigned to show up again.” She was obviously still
pissed at me. “Get up, we have guests coming.”
“What?” I said. “Who?”
“Our new neighbours, Gabriel and Tina. I’ve invited them over for coffee. They’ll be
here any minute.”
And before I even had time to get out of bed, they were in our hallway: a couple
approaching middle-age – that generation between mum and me that I’d never been able to
relate to. He had a beard; she was tall, almost a foot taller than me. They had one child with
them and the bump under her printed tunic revealed that a second one was on its way.
“My youngest daughter baked this”, mum said when we were all seated in the kitchen
and a perfectly round tiger cake landed on the table.
I thought I heard judgement in her voice. I had never felt like mum favoured Emma or
even compared us to each other, not even once. But now she was, she’d have preferred it if
Emma had been here to see her cake appreciated, to talk about herself and her goings-on,
school and all her friends – she would’ve preferred her over me.
“It’s delicious.”
“You’re sister can certainly bake.”
I squeezed my cup of coffee, smiling stiffly. Then I stopped talking altogether.
Our new neighbours turned out to be researchers; he studied history of religions –
what she did remained unclear. He monopolised the conversation completely. His area of
expertise was the religions of South East Asia, words like “idols”, “tantra” and “mysteries”
were repeated several times. At the moment, he was working on some kind of teaching
materials. In his free time he enjoyed running.
“But right now, this little one is the centre of attention”, he said and nodded to the
baby bump. He referred to the pregnancy several times, but not to Tina. The only time she
was mentioned, he called her “my wife”:
“My wife has family in Dalarna, you see…”
And then we were subjected to a tedious account of their holiday plans.
Tina smiled cautiously from behind her coffee cup. I felt as though we had some sort
of connection – my fumbling interpretation of the fact that I felt somewhat drawn to her. She
was actually not bad-looking: thick dark hair tumbling down to her shoulders; a web of
charming freckles across her cheeks. But something seemed to be eating her from the inside,
kind of like insects in fruit, and she looked like she might collapse any second. The toddler
kept pulling at her leg, but as soon as she picked him up he wiggled free. His intensity
surprised me. Was this what children were like? If it was, I was never having any.
“If only I had his energy”, his dad said, evidently proud of everything his son did.
“He’s adorable”, mum agreed.
Every once in a while, mum glared at me with a look that could not be misinterpreted:
So you think you’re off the hook, do you? Just you wait until they leave and we’ll see about
that.”
Which meant I was scared to say anything at all the whole time. I had several pieces
of cake, which really was good: moist and perfectly springy. Why was Emma so good at so
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many things while I was good at nothing? Was it innate, like her darker skin and shinier hair,
a gene I lacked? Or was it just a matter of willpower? Could it be that I’d ended up where I
was simply because I lacked drive?
Those were the kinds of things going through my head when I picked up a rumpled
advertising supplement that was lying around. A woman in a red bathing suit with a
measuring tape round her waist demonstrated the benefits of a powder diet. “Thin in two
weeks!” the witty speech bubble next to her head promised. A few pages in, a man in a baggy
suit advocated various instant loans (“3000 kronor, no waiting). Language courses. Dog food
subscriptions. Lotteries.
There were days when being a grownup didn’t seem so terrifying – some aspects of it
even seemed appealing on occasion – but as I sat there looking back and forth between the
supplement and our new neighbours, I experienced a kind of vertigo, a glimpse of a fate
worse than death itself…
I got to my feet.
“I have to go”, I announced, sounding more stilted than I’d intended. And then I
walked straight out the door.
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21
I walked around for a while, bought a hotdog in the town centre. I was just starting to worry
about my precarious situation when my phone rang.
“There you are.”
To my surprise, it was Lidija. She was squealing with delight, showering me with
affection, as though I were a run-away cat. “Oh Lollo, I’m sorry. I don’t know what came
over me. Can you forgive me? Say you can.” Before I could respond she said: “I miss you
already. Where are you, bitch?”
I smiled to myself. “Bitch” – at that moment it felt like the most endearing thing
anyone had ever said to me. “Just around”, I said. “Don’t really know where to go since I’m
pretty sure mum’s furious with me.”
“Then come over.”
“Come to yours?”
“Yeah, just come over. Then we can head out, at least for a bit. I think I can manage
an hour or whatever.”
A few minutes later, I was outside her flat. Ana opened the door. I saw her
increasingly rarely and was, as always, surprised by her diminutive build. Thin body,
wrapped in an ill-fitting, cream-coloured angora cardigan, and thin voice – a curious
counterpoint to Lidija’s many stories about her brash, dominant personality.
But she wasn’t particularly friendly.
“Lidija’s coming”, she said curtly. Before I had time to open my mouth, she’d
disappeared back into the flat.
There was a conversation in Serbian that quickly got heated and culminated in what I
thought sounded like profanities from both of them: “Prestani, jebote!”, “Mislila sam da ćeš
ti da prestaneš!”
“She was really pissed”, I said to Lidija when we got outside. “Did something
happen?”
She heaved a sigh. “She’s just not so keen on us hanging out. I’ve told her. About K,
about everything.”
She cut me off before I could react. “It’s doesn’t matter, Lollo. She’s not going to tell
anyone. We’re Serbs, not tattletales.”
I stared at her. “But –“
“The thing is, I have to stop doing all that. To be honest, the whole thing bores me.
It’s time to get on with something more worthwhile, you know. Ana wants me out. And I’m
practically broke.”
We were back where we’d started that day, outside the supermarket. This time, we
went in and silently picked up some supplies, crisps and gum for me, a punnet of blueberries
for Lidija. A minefield of questions had sprung up between us – but all I heard myself say
when we got back outside was:
“Blueberries, how come?”
“I have to, to get better.” She laughed. “What if mum and dad found out, huh? That I
use the money they gave me to buy berries.”
The unsettled weather – steel blue skies, thunder in the air – amplified the weird
mood. We passed the remains of the old pool. Golden sprigs of mimosa glowed in the
nothingness. I chewed my gum.
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It was Mimmi, she said, finally. She’d tried to like her but she just couldn’t. She was
fake and weird; something was off, didn’t I notice it too? I replied that I didn’t, no, at least
not in the way she was describing it. Alright, fine; I was obviously entitled to my own
opinion. And then the conversation devolved into idle chitchat and triviality. She was
thinking of going to Belgrade this summer, if she could find a cheap ticket. And Robin had
apparently been in touch again.
“He’s in love with me. I don’t really get why.”
My gum tasted bad so I spat it out. The pale lump landed in front of Lidija’s boots
without a sound. She stopped and scraped her heel against the ground, scratching a small
circle around the gum.
“Poor Robin”, she continued. “He really wants me. You should’ve heard him. He was
practically begging me to come over.”
“Over to his house?” I said.
“Yeah. Did you know his parents still talk about me? He told me last night. They talk
about me all the time. No other girlfriend –“
This conversation had once again veered in a direction I wanted nothing to do with.
“Right”, I said. “That’s sweet.”
We’d come to a small, abandoned playground; basketball hoops with no net, a rusty
swing set. We sat down on the swings. I opened the bag of crisps, putting it under Lidija’s
chin. She pushed it away:
“No thanks. And you shouldn’t eat that either. It’ll make you ill.”
“You’re the one who’s ill. Not me.”
“But you will be too eventually if you carry on like this.”
I stuck my hand into the bag, cramming some wafers in my mouth. “Maybe”, I said.
“But I don’t give a shit.”
For a while, neither of us spoke, a strained silence that symbolised everything we both
knew but didn’t have the guts to say: There was a distance between us these days and it was
vast, possibly even decisive. Lidija was going one way, I another. Except I wasn’t aware of
that last part back then.
“You don’t give a shit about anything, do you?” she said. “You should. Do you know
what you should be doing? Things, real things.”
“Such as?” I swung listlessly back and forth. “What the fuck am I supposed to be
doing, according to you? I don’t know how to do anything.”
“Yes, you do. Everyone does.” And then she said, and it sounded like the most
depressing thing I’d ever heard in my life: “I’ve taken up music again. Electronic, I make it
on my laptop. It’s a lot of fun. You can come listen to it sometime, I mean, if you want to.”
I nodded, or at least I assume I did, and it started raining, a fine drizzle that hit the bag
of crisps with a loud drip, drip, drip. Normally, I liked storms, for their chaos and drama and
because they always somehow pushed you toward new, unpredictable adventures. But there
was nothing pleasant about our prospects these days. Our future was a bleak and miserable
vista, filled with nothing but ugliness and poverty.
“This bloody weather sucks”, I said and leaned forward on my swing. And then,
without warning, I threw up in the sand.
Shocked, I stared at the evil puddle.
“Congratulations”, Lidija said, “Maybe it’s time for someone to get a grip after all.”
The taste of vomit in my mouth. The rain hitting my head, heavy, real drops by now. I
felt like crying. What did this mean? Was it a sign? If it was, it wasn’t a good one.
“Lidija, I…”
But she wasn’t listening, and I’d no idea what I was trying to say anyway.
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She let go of her swing, got to her feet. “Goddamn it, it’s fucking chucking it down
now.”
I knew what was coming and even though I was already bored of sitting here, bored
of everything and not sure Lidija was the solution to either problem, my entire being shrank
from it:
“Lidija, don’t go. Can’t we just hang out tonight, like we used to?”
She looked at me. Brown eyes, black eyeliner.
“I’m sorry, Lollo, but it’s cold and I’m ill. I really have to go home.”
“Please.”
“No.”
No one said no like Lidija – deep and final like an old piano teacher dismissing her
young pupil’s immature improvisations.
*
I’d been here so many times before. I could be sick of Lidija, angry even, but then we went
our separate ways and I immediately and without fail felt empty and alone, lonelier than
anyone in the whole world.
After we said goodbye, I shuffled down the pavement in the town centre. I went into
the laundromat to rinse out my mouth, popped in my last piece of gum. The rain continued to
fall. A string of fairy lights, leftovers from a Christmas past, twinkled on a balcony. It’s me
and the Christmas ornaments, I thought. We’re the only ones left. Apparently my brain was
still composing ridiculous little proto-poems.
What was I going to do now? Going home was out of the question; mum would tear
me to pieces. A number of confused ideas swirled through my mind. Should I build some
kind of lean-to in the woods? Just to sleep in until a new, better solution appeared? It was
warmer out now; I’d survive. Or should I maybe go away somewhere? People did stuff like
that, just packed up their belongings and took off. But I’d barely finished the thought before
my head was filled with dark, jumbled images of strange countries where unintelligible
languages were spoken; European ports you never returned from, the Netherlands,
Belgium… Belgium was crawling with serial killers; that much I knew from TV.
In the end, I called Mimmi.
“Mimmi, it’s Lollo. Look, I’m in a bit of a bind. Would you mind if I popped by?”
My cheerful tone was completely unable to hide how miserable I felt. I had a strong
feeling she’d say no. Our relationship was about to be over, the way it had been about to be
over several times before.
But to my immense relief she was friendly, laughed and said she was just on her way
out to walk Claus and Beatrix home and that I was welcome anytime:
“Just come on over. Claus took a dump in the stairwell so I have to mop that up right
quick when I get back or the neighbours will go nuts. But if you help me, it’ll be done in a
jiffy.”
*
By the time I got to Mimmi’s, it had stopped raining and the weather had done a complete
one-eighty, like a merry magic trick by the gods. Sharp sunlight broke through the clouds and
when I stepped into the yard it looked like July: an azalea in full bloom, the sounds of a cat
waking up. The paving stones, wet with rain, glistened in the sunshine.
“Lollo, over here!”
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She was sitting on a bench amid the greenery. I barely recognised her – turned up
jeans and a washed-out t-shirt, her hair dirty and pinned into a messy French twist. And, more
remarkably: glasses, big, black tortoiseshell frames I’d never seen before.
“Oh, hi”, I said, “I thought you were cleaning?”
“Already done. It looked worse than it was; I just had to tidy up outside the door. So
now, here I am, enjoying myself. What about this weather, eh? By the way” – she reached for
the bag-in-box sitting on the ground next to her chair – “there’s a bit of rosé left. If you want
it.”
I sat down and we started chatting. What was this bind I was in, she wanted to know,
nothing serious hopefully? I sighed and gave her an uninspired account of my home situation,
leaving out the stuff about Lidija. It’s always like that, she said, just a bunch of problems all
the time. But not tonight, right? Tonight we’d not think about any of it and just do whatever
we felt like. She squinted behind her glasses; a greasy strand of hair fell across her face. She
really didn’t look like herself in this mundane getup, more like a receptionist at a conference
facility than the fashion princess she was – a metamorphosis I found attractive, oddly enough.
“I’d like that”, I said.
She looked at me then, for a long time, as though she were contemplating something.
“Come inside with me”, she said, “I want to show you something.”
*
By the time we’d kicked off our shoes in her hallway, a new and hushed mood had taken
hold.
Mimmi asked me to lock the front door: “My neighbours are a bit special; if you’re
not careful they suddenly appear, yelling about all kind of things.”
I nodded and turned the lock.
It goes without saying that I’m tempted to add something here, a look or maybe a
touch, brief but filled with restrained lust. But that would assume I had the confidence to
interpret the situation that way, and I quite simply didn’t. All I know for sure is that she
pulled me inside with her, past the threadbare armchair and the banana tree and all the things
I’d seen countless times, but that I for some reason still noted, crossing each off my mental
list like a little auctioneer.
At the back of the flat, in the nook next to bedroom, a thick, patterned cloth hung on
the wall. I’d always assumed it was meant to be decorative or possibly to conceal something,
an ugly stain or whatever. The latter turned out to be closer to the truth, because when
Mimmi removed the fabric with a tug, a narrow door appeared.
“I’m going to show you something”, she said and put her hand on the handle.
It wasn’t a toilet, it could barely even be called a bathroom – it was a minor boudoir.
Chequered floor tiles, gold taps and fittings, loads of film posters. Perfume bottles were lined
up on the glass shelf under the mirror.
“Oh my god”, I exclaimed. “What is this?”
“Just my private space.” She glanced at me, clearly pleased with the impression her
secret room had made. “I retreat in here sometimes, when I need to.”
We went in without turning the lights on. It was an enormous room, ceremonial and
contrived like the scenery in a Hitchcock film. What did she get up to in here? Meditation?
Of all the odd things and activities Mimmi had introduced me to, this, her meticulously
arranged secret room, was by far the weirdest.
I lingered in front of the bottles. I didn’t really know what to say so I said: “Lots of
perfumes.”
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She laughed and picked up a bottle, a large, hexagonal thing with ruby red contents.
She squirted a couple of quick sprays into thin air. A heavy scent of alcohol, soil and flowers
spread through the room – if I hadn’t been feeling drunk before, I was definitely starting to
now.
“Not just perfumes, rose perfumes”, she said, winking. “I love them. But these are my
favourites.” She pointed to the old film posters that covered every square inch of wall: Joan
Crawford and Lauren Bacall, above the toilet was the poster for The Woman in Red, with
Barbara Stanwyck gazing out at us with an ominous look.
“Sure, they’re nice”, I said. And then I added, which made me feel like a total halfwit: “Do you watch a lot of films?”
“I love Hollywood and I love actresses. But films, no, not all.”
The reply was instantaneous and surprised me; this room wasn’t the only place
decorated with this kind of motif. Pictures of actresses and framed postcards of old movie
stars could be found all over the flat and I’d often imagined Mimmi watching these women’s
faces in black and white films noir on the nights when she couldn’t be bothered with the rest
of us. Watching old films, that was exactly the kind of thing she’d do, I’d thought to myself.
But apparently not.
“Why not?”, I asked.
She shrugged. “Because”, she said, “how did Brigitte Bardot put it again? Films have
never shown the kind of relationship that can exist between two women.”
I’d carried my empty wineglass with me all the way in here. Now I put it down on the
glass shelf. I could feel my pulse quiver and my palms breaking out in a sweat.
“Like us right now, or what?” I said.
She raised an eyebrow. “For example.”
It was not the fizzy, intoxicating attraction I’d felt with men. But nor was it the
passionate, tangled emotions I’d subsequently come to experience with women. It was
something different, a proper need, grownup and violent, which started in my head and
steadily pulsed into every part of my body.
“Were you thinking…” I murmured as I approached her where she was sitting on the
toilet seat. “I mean, what do you want me to –“
“Anything, Lollo, anything.” She gave me a tiny smile. “I live according to my Nan’s
motto: Be a slut, do whatever the fuck you want.”
I burst out laughing, a needlessly loud laugh that revealed just how nervous I was,
checked myself and said: “Neat motto.”
How were you suppose to go about this? I hadn’t had sex in ages and never with a
girl. Was it difficult? It was probably incredibly complicated and I was going to make a fool
of myself, inevitably. But then my inhibitions melted away even as I put them into words: I
was drunk and Mimmi was sexier than ever and that was all I needed to know.
“Do you know what I think?” she breathed when I gingerly straddled her on the toilet
seat and closed my hands around her jaw. “I think we should have done this a long time ago.”
And then I kissed her.
Her lips, sticky with lip gloss, her lightly tanned neck and cheeks – I’d never before
tasted such perfect skin, cool and moist as though she’d just come out of a cold bath. She
looked at me with glazed eyes, grabbed the back of my neck and then put her face to my
chest.
It was not like sex with a guy, but it wasn’t fundamentally different either. It was just
better, a sudden clash I must have fantasised about for a long time without knowing it. No
grabby hands eagerly pawing at my pants – but then they were there, just when I couldn’t’
wait any longer. When she slid her fingers into my slit, it was as if I could feel me inside her
at the same time. I grabbed her shoulders, heard the sound of my own loud panting.
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Then she said: “Hey, you know what? Let’s let K watch.”
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22
I had no idea what time it was when I woke from a broken, inadequate slumber on Mimmi’s
living room sofa. I tottered out into the kitchen on unsteady legs.
“Well, good morning.” She was sitting on the kitchen counter, phone in one hand and
a sandwich in the other. She was wearing a dressing gown, the yellow one I’d seen on her
blog countless times; her hair was covered in mud-like gloop.
“Hi”, I said. “What are you doing?”
“You mean this?” She pointed to her head. “Just a little makeover. It’s henna. I’m
going red today.”
“What?” I suddenly realised how strongly I associated Mimmi with her damaged,
platinum blonde hair. “Why red?”
“Why not? All the cool chicks have red hair” – she started counting them off on her
fingers – Pippi Longstocking, Rita Hayworth, Katharine Hepburn…” Then she cut herself
short: “Though to be honest, that’s not the real reason. It’s actually a way for me to mark an
occasion, to start fresh, you might say.”
“Start fresh?” I said and stifled a yawn. I really was very tired. “In what sense?”
“I have to do something new. I’m getting really fucking sick of everything, getting
fucking sick of people, I should probably say. So many people wanting things from me all the
time. But these” – she threw a kiss at a potted plant in the window, a large cyclamen – “they
just need water and a bit of sunlight. I haven’t told anyone yet, but I’ve actually applied to
university. I’m studying botany in the autumn. Then we’ll see what comes of it, if I become a
marine biologist or a gardener or both.”
I was taken aback by her professional spiel. Yesterday, we’d lain in a tangled heap on
her bathroom floor – now she was behaving as though we were work colleagues.
In some sort of attempt to play along with this charade, I sat down, picked up a
newspaper and pretended to read.
Suddenly she said: “Thanks for last night by the way. K says hi, he was very happy.”
I cracked an embarrassed smile. “Say hi back”, I said.
“He has a question actually. Well, it’s not something you have to decide on right now,
but –“
“Yes?”
“He wants to know if you’ll meet him sometime.”
“You? You who?
“You and Lidija. Mostly because these things can feel more comfortable if you go
together.”
These things? I wasn’t following. What were we talking about now?
“What, like sleep with him?”
She flinched, as though my words had been an electric shock. “Absolutely not”, she
said, “there’s no pressure to do that. You just do whatever you feel like, is what I mean.”
I thought about Lidija and her many opinions about Mimmi. Asking her about this
was impossible; she’d be furious just hearing about it.
“I suppose I could…” I said without taking the time to really think about it, “but I
don’t know about Lidija. She’s ill right now and she has quite a lot on her plate and stuff.”
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“Sure.” She nodded ardently. “But check with her anyway, would you? There’s no
rush.”
There was a short pause. We both looked at our phones. Mum hadn’t called yet,
which I found slightly surprising – she usually called when on a rare occasion I stayed out all
night.
Mimmi jumped down from the counter. “By the way, are you hungry? There’s eggs
and a bit of milk in the fridge; the coffee’s over here.”
When she reached for the coffee can in the food cupboard, I spotted a bruise around
her wrist, at the edge of the dressing gown sleeve.
“Ouch”, I said, “what did you do?”
“What?”
I pointed at the bruise. I was a deep indigo, with angrily blushing edges.
“Oh, that.” She shrugged. “No idea. Maybe the dogs. They can get pretty wild.
Yesterday Claus bit me in the calf.”
That explanation sounded less than plausible.
“You’re a prostitute, aren’t you?” It just came out.
“What?”
“That’s what Michaela says.”
“Michaela?” She slammed the cupboard door shut and said, in a voice dripping with
contempt and rage: “Michaela is one depressed old hag. Don’t believe everything she says.
Did you know her younger brother drowned in a pool when she was little? Did she tell you
that?”
“No”, I answered truthfully.
“I didn’t think so. Michaela has a tendency to doctor reality in the most random ways
to make herself come off well. We’ve known each other for a while now so I know her story
and it’s a fairly twisted one, if you know what I mean. And this thing with her brother; to be
honest, she needs some professional help. She still thinks it was her fault somehow. By the
way, did you know her parents are loaded? She grew up in a mansion with servants and all
that shit; she’s never lifted a finger in her life. And she still thinks it’s okay to have all kinds
of opinions about what other people get up to. She’s even complained to me about the dogs
several times. How sick is that, right?”
I stared at her. This was not just a bizarre rant, it was also, of course, some kind of
confirmation of where we stood. What could we say to each other now? I wanted to know
more, about all of it. But I was also Mimmi’s guest and didn’t feel I could push her.
There was a small, tense silence.
“Where are they now”, I said, in an attempt to save the situation, “the dogs, I mean?”
She chucked some cutlery into the sink. “At home”, she said. I don’t have them every
day. Tuesdays and Thursdays, definitely my favourite days.” And then she shot me a small,
collected smile again. “I look after Archy and Amos, the two border collies – such little
darlings – every other weekend. And then there’s Coco and Boy, but they’re abroad at the
moment. Coco is so cute, a proper little diva. You have to meet her –“
Her phone rang. She picked it up, looked at the display and decided to answer.
“Yeah?” She scrunched up her face. “What? For real? Where is she now?”
“Fuck”, she exclaimed after finishing the call. “Goddamn fucking shit.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“A fucking disaster is what. Becky went over to the Courgette Man last night. Well,
they call him that.”
“And?”
“Apparently he kept her locked up all night.”
“Locked up?”
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“In a room in his basement. A super creepy place, full of teddy bears and all kinds of
crap. She found a pair of little girl’s knickers and a letter from someone in a drawer.”
“Oh my god.”
“Right, poor Becky; she’s so sensitive as well. But it seems nothing bad happened.
Lucky.”
And then Mimmi turned to face the mirror on the wall, a round little thing with a
multi-coloured mosaic glass frame. “I mean, yeah, it’s terrible, obviously, but it’s the kind of
thing you have to be prepared for, I guess.” She wiped away traces of gloop that had dribbled
past her hairline and sighed. “I’m glad she’s alive, anyway.”
I studied her and her unruffled movements as she unfastened the clips holding her hair
up and prepared to rinse the dye out. For a brief moment, over as soon as it happened, an icy
cold swept through me. So Becky had been the victim of what would at the very least be
classified as false imprisonment, and this was it? A couple of profanities, a shrug? Then I
decided to forget the whole thing.
*
When we parted ways later that afternoon, Mimmi said:
“You’ll be staying for a few days, right? Then why don’t you take this?” She held out
a key to her flat.
It was an offer I would never have expected.
“I’d love to stay”, I said. “So see you here later then?”
She nodded and we said goodbye the way we always did, with a hug and a couple of
kisses on the cheek.
The weather outside was strange, a restless, crackling low pressure and brash, prickly
sunshine somewhere behind the blanket of clouds; it gave me a headache. I had to go home
and change my clothes, I thought. And so I did.
Thankfully, no one was in the flat. In my room I threw together a couple of changes
of clothes and my diary; in the kitchen I looked for something to eat. Aside from a boiled egg
at Mimmi’s, I hadn’t eaten for a full twenty-four hours and my stomach was howling. I found
sliced bread in the freezer and a jar of jam in the fridge. I ate two sandwiches laden with jam
and started in on a third but felt full and threw away the rest. Then I nabbed a Diet Coke from
Emma and left the flat again.
When I got outside, I had a text from mum. “Staying elsewhere?”, read its only line.
“Yes”, I replied.
*
Overnight, my life became sublime: bigger and more beautiful.
Mimmi welcomed me with a new toothbrush and my own mug; I settled in on the sofa
with my belongings. I’ll never forget those first days when we’d get up and spend our
mornings pottering about separately, only to meet up in the evening, like a married couple.
We’d listen to music and cook together, soups and various vegetarian casseroles, before
eventually collapsing with our favourite hobbies, me in front of the TV, Mimmi with her
plants, which were taking up ever more of her time. Those were the best of days, simple yet
so different from anything I’d ever experienced.
You’re wondering whether we slept together again and we did. But we weren’t lovers
and absolutely not a couple. “Hey baby”, Mimmi might say and sink to her knees, pressing
her lips to my stomach. The next day we’d keep each other at arm’s length, breakfasting in
silence, not touching one another at all. I didn’t know what we were and it both amused and
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puzzled me. My whole life, I’d dismissed relationships as petty, as spectacles comprised of
predictabilities and conventions, pre-written scripts, disgraceful gender roles. And then I
found this. Could this be the answer?
There was one threat looming on our horizon; there always is, right? The threat was
K. I still webcammed with him, had even stripped completely for him on a couple of
occasions. But Mimmi kept insisting I take it further. Didn’t I want to meet him? Maybe next
week? Even if it was never explicitly stated, I sensed that my permission to stay at her house
was contingent on me meeting him. “If you knew how much he wants to meet you”, she said
as early as my second day there, and on the third: “He’s generous, just so you know. Pays
well.”
But I hesitated. K had lost some of his draw. The last time we’d spoken, we’d
struggled to keep the conversation going. And he was the one who’d asked me to take my
clothes off in the end. I hadn’t been entirely on board with that.
When the subject came up again, I said: “What does generous mean? Is it really worth
it?”
“I think so.”
We were in her bathroom, which had already become my favourite part of the flat. It
was both warmer and somehow more private than the other rooms; being in there felt like
being wrapped in a cocoon, a protective sphere that kept the world at a safe distance. I’d
often contemplate the picture of Barbara Stanwyck – it was the one I liked the best – and I
was studying it now as well. I wanted to be here – I didn’t want to be anywhere else.
“I’m not sure”, I said. “What if it all goes wrong, doesn’t it ever?”
Mimmi was sitting on the toilet seat, moisturising her legs. She said – which I only
now realise demonstrates the rapid drift that was taking place: “It does. It does more or less
all the time. But that’s life, right? Non, je ne regrette rien.” She winked at me. “Do you know
what I think? Regrets are for losers.”
So stupid, so messed up. But at the time, I barely noticed. Everything was stupid and
everything was messed up; what you had to do was identify the actual dangers and dodge
them as best you could.
I took her head in my hands and planted a kiss on her forehead. “We’ll see, Mimmi”, I
said. “I promise I’ll think about it.”
*
I didn’t hear from mum again, which would normally have made me anxious but didn’t
bother me in the slightest now. I didn’t talk to Lidija again either. A bit of texting back and
forth, no attempts to meet up. Strange, how your whole life can just fade away and be
replaced by another. Partly it was a matter of acclimatising, I suppose. Mimmi’s own family
ties and history were still noticeably opaque and even though she never brought the subject
up herself, it was clear that one of her guiding principles was: Life is here and now, with the
means you have at your disposal and the people who happen to cross your path, and looking
beyond that is just asking for trouble. The only people we talked about were the high
schoolers, Michaela and Danny and the other people we hung out with. Nadja was turning
eighteen on Tuesday, should we throw her a surprise party? And Saga’s new boyfriend,
wasn’t he kind of a pain? And what did we think about the new girl, Julia?
The subject of Lidija came up just once, one morning while we were having breakfast
at the little folding table:
“Why do I never see Lidija around anymore?” There was no preamble.
“She’s ill.”
“She’s ill a lot.”
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“Yep.”
Mimmi dunked a biscuit in her coffee. While she slurped up the soggy result she said:
“You’ve fallen out, haven’t you?”
I heaved a sigh. “I guess you could say that.”
She nodded behind her mug. This intrigued her, I could tell. “Were you always close,
you and Lidija?”
Only since high school. I used to hang out with this other girl called Evelina, dull as
sand. Not like Lidija at all; Lidija’s just completely different.”
She let go of her mug. “Everyone’s different, Lollo.”
“Sure, but Lidija and I…” I trailed off, as though I already knew how stupid our
slogan would sound to her. And still, I said it: “We’re not like other people. We’re not like
other girls.”
For a moment, she looked at me with that expression that was so unique to her and
which I can only approximately describe as a mix between facetiousness and frosty
diplomacy.
She said: There are no other girls.”
“Maybe so, but –“
“No, Lollo.” And then she uttered the following – and of all the home-grown
aphorisms she was going to bombard me with during our brief time together, this is the one
that has stayed with me: “We’re all fools and geniuses. They just try to make us think
otherwise.”
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23
At the end of that week, we had a night out. For the first time since she dyed her hair red,
Mimmi wore it down. That night saw the big launch of Pamela, the alter ego Mimmi had
been talking about for a few days but which I hadn’t understood the full significance of, other
than that it seemed to be connected with her newfound interest in nature. From now on I
should always call her Pamela, she declared, and on this particular night, it became clear that
she meant for it to be a major shift: Pamela not only had a different hair colour, she also wore
different clothes (only ever dark ones), and I even thought I noticed a change in her
personality (older somehow).
“What do you think about this?” she said and pulled an ink black kaftan from her
wardrobe.
I hadn’t seen it before. “Yeah, it’s nice”, I replied.
She pulled on the kaftan on and bounded out into the flat, fastening sparkling
accessories around her wrists and neck. She had never been more convinced by her own
creation than that night. “Call me Theda”, she said and threw the hall mirror a kiss, “I’m a
vampire”.
When we got outside, she turned left instead of right toward the town centre, like she
usually did.
“Where are we going?”
“To Tetris. The new place.”
“Okay?”
Just northwest of Aspudden, there was a small machine park. It was really an
abandoned industrial estate, but it’d been so long since it was in official use that all kinds of
vehicles had rolled in, turning it into a veritable monument to desolate masculinity. We
zigzagged past a long row of wheel loaders. A dusty bulldozer glared at us from under the
feeble light of a streetlamp.
“But why is it here?”
“Where else would it be?”
Which was, of course, a very apposite question.
Tetris was located behind a tall wooden fence. The provisional entrance consisted of a
few ramshackle boards; the back of my hand was stamped with a fluorescent T. I’d never
been to a club before and was amazed at how many things could be squeezed into such a
small space; there were three bars, three no less, and even more dancefloors. A heaving mass
of less than sober people moved about in tight, rowdy groups. We’d only just got through the
door when Saga and Nadja emerged from the crowd: Heeey guys and Have you been here
long? Then followed an orgy of hugs with people I knew, only just about knew and didn’t
know at all.
It was only when Mimmi left to meet someone at the entrance that I found myself on
my own. I was still stone cold sober and wondered if I should maybe buy a drink. Then a
familiar existence suddenly loomed up before me.
“Hi there gorgeous.”
“Oh, hi Danny.”
Lanky limbs, a t-shirt with a bold ironic print (“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”). “So
you’ve found your way here too, huh?” he said.
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I laughed. “Evidently.”
Without warning, he shoved a small bag in my hand. I put my fingers in it, raising the
content to my lips.
“Don’t you want any?” I said.
“Not today.”
“How come?”
“I have to go off my meds first.”
He was referring to the pills he took for his bipolarity. Something about serotonin
receptors and how different drugs clashed, because one got rid of serotonin, while the other
kept it in – Mimmi had explained it all to it to me at one point.
“By the way, is it true what they say”, he said and took a swig from his can of lager,
“that you and Mimmi are the new BFFs?”
“Sure, I guess you could say that.”
He blinked. “Just BFFs?”
Good question; what were we to each other, Mimmi and I? I still didn’t know and I
didn’t have the energy to think about it right now, at least not with a high imminent. So I just
told him: “We do it sometimes. But I think you’re fucking hot too. If that’s what you were
wondering.”
Somehow we’d made our way out behind the club, where we were the only people
around. Fences and scrap metal, a clutch of rusty rebars. I leaned against the fence, which
sagged and gave way under me. He took a step forward. “You’re not too shabby either.”
“Thanks.” I mumbled: “I feel confused now, I thought I liked girls…”
He took my hand and said with a grin: “That’s cool; I can be a girl.”
He was a combination of all manner of things, big and small, soft and hard. Long, wiry
arms, wrists as thin as a child’s. His skin was so soft, much softer than mine, which fascinated
me. I squeezed it hard between my fingers, staring at him. Green eyes, enormous, the biggest
I’ve ever seen. For a moment I thought he looked feline.
“Your eyes”, I said.
“Yes?”
“They’re…”
And at this point warmth flowed through me with a force that knocked my head back.
Above me the clear night sky: moon and stars and light phenomena I’d never seen before.
Lightning rattling and varicoloured clouds. A glittering band snaked its way across the pale
pink backdrop like northern lights. Where was I? Here? There?
Somewhere further down, his hips were grinding against mine. Thrusts that spread
through my torso and chest and straight to my head. I felt like I was going to explode. I clutched
the back of his neck. “Oh my god”, I moaned, “What’s happening?”
“MDMA”, he said, “there’s nothing like sex on MDMA.”
*
When I woke up the next morning, I was still exhilarated. Mimmi was asleep and I decided to
head outside. Blue sky, gravel skittering across the pavement. When I closed my eyes, it came
rushing back: Tetris and Danny, fucking against the fence. Effervescent joy bubbled up inside
me. I suddenly felt head over heels in love. I had to call him, I thought; I had to see him and
we had to do it all again.
Then everything just dissolved, like thoughts always do when you’re in that state.
*
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The following weekend, I was trawling Tetris again, high as a kite. I was looking for someone
when I walked straight into Michaela. She was standing by the bar, alone. A dark, droopy beret,
fingers heavy with rings, flitting this way and that across the counter. She was obviously under
the influence of something too.
“Haven’t seen you in a while”, she hollered over the pounding music.
“No, I guess not”, I said. “Good to see you.”
But she wasn’t in the mood for small talk. “You’re hanging out with Mimmi a lot these
days.” She fixed me with unsettling, glazed eyes. “Don’t take her too seriously. Mimmi lives
in Cloud Cuckoo Land, just be clear on that.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Supposed to mean? Well, where to start? You’ve met the dogs, right? She claims
they’re called Claus and Beatrix and god knows what, but I don’t believe a fucking word of it.
They’re probably called Rex or Rambo if you ask me. Did you know she organises dinner
parties for them sometimes? That she dresses them up and serves them real, cooked meals at
the table? Sounds quirky, maybe, but also pretty demented.”
“Hardly a crime though, right?” My voice was flat. I was on Mimmi’s side; if I hadn’t
been sure about that before, I was now.
“No, but it’s fucking weird, don’t you think? Weird to be playing make believe when
you’re a grownup. She tried to rename me Isabella, by the way. Because she thought it suited
me better.” The music was turned up and she struggled to make herself heard over it. “And one
summer she got it in her head she was Brigitte Bardot, wore her hair up in one of those beehives
and insisted that everyone call her BB. It was fucking hard work; whenever someone slipped
up and said Mimmi she was furious and would kick everyone out without warning. And now”,
she said and rolled her eyes. “It’s apparently supposed to be Pamela.”
I was getting annoyed. “So what? It’s not like Lollo’s my real name either –“
“But that’s not quite the same thing, now is it?”
The bartender was bothered by the loudness of our conversation and signalled to us to
lower our voices. We fell silent, just looking at each other.
Suddenly Michaela leaned in and said, with a frosty edge to her voice: “Listen.
Mimmi’s fantastic; I think so too. But she’s delusional. Just don’t let your guard down, is all
I’m saying. Otherwise you never know what might happen. She can make the sickest things
seem normal. Like doing drugs all the time and pimping out school girls.”
“I don’t know which word upset me more: “pimp” or “school girls”, but I couldn’t stay
there, not for another second.
“Okay, we’ll have to talk more some other time”, I hissed. “I have to go.”
*
Nothing Michaela had said was news exactly, quite the opposite. She’d told me all of it before
and besides, these days, I kind of formed part of Mimmi’s dubious creation. And yet I couldn’t
seem to shake it off. How to explain it? It was as though a fog had cleared. To keep things
simple, I guess we could call it signs – small and not so small events that occurred all the time
but that hadn’t been connected until after Michaela’s intercession.
The first came as early as that Sunday. It was evening, one of those evenings that are
so comfortable and staid, you’d have thought we were married. Tea and sandwiches, candles
in the windows. I was watching TV, Mimmi was slouched in the armchair, reading one of her
favourite books, Thoreau’s Walden.
“Do you read a lot, Lollo?” she said. The question was sudden.
I turned away from the TV. “No”, I said. “Not anymore.”
“You should. Reading’s good for you, escaping and pretending to be someone else.”
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That was all, which is to say it was nothing, really. But something about this statement
encapsulated everything I already knew but didn’t want to deal with until now: Mimmi lived
some kind of sophisticated lie, pervasive and impossible to penetrate.
The second time was more obvious. I was tidying my pile of stuff, which had spilled
out between the legs of the sofa, when a photograph fell out from between the pages of my
diary. It was a picture of dad on our balcony, smiling behind a bowl of crayfish. I kept it in
there because it was one of the more harmonious moments of the life we’d shared, not overly
idyllic or anything, but happy and nice, a glimpse of a life that had seemed to work.
Mimmi picked it up.
“Nice”, she said. “Is it your dad?”
“Yes.”
“Are you in touch with him?”
“To be honest, no, barely at all.”
She nodded and handed me the picture. “You should be happy you have one, at least.”
I put the photograph back in my diary. “Yeah, sure. I guess I never thought about it that
way.” Then I asked, which was probably stupid. “What about you? Do you have a dad?”
I still hadn’t experienced that thing Michaela kept coming back to, how the wrong
question could really set Mimmi off. Now she scrunched her face into an evil grimace and got
to her feet.
“That”, she said. “is none of your business.”
*
And then there was the big freak out, the proper tantrum, the beginning of the end.
I was passing through the hallway when I noticed the dress, the one Mimmi had worn
for her birthday. It was on a hanger on the wardrobe door in her bedroom, white and luminous.
I hadn’t seen it since the party and suddenly felt like going over to look at it. I pinched the crisp
fabric, gingerly rubbing it between my fingertips.
Then an ice cold voice spoke behind me.
“Don’t touch it.”
I spun around.
“I was just looking.”
“No, you were touching it. It’s my mother’s wedding dress.”
“But I thought –“
“Just leave it alone.”
*
One Thursday, Mimmi took me all the way to the botanic gardens north of the city. I honestly
don’t know why I went along. Over the course of just a few days, the mood between us had
become fairly unpleasant; it was only just this particular morning we’d managed to summon
even a half-hearted laugh about something, I don’t remember what.
But by the time we got there, everything felt wrong again, like when married couples
desperately attempt to bury their marital crises in refurbishments and the purchasing of
expensive furniture. Mimmi dashed around the greenhouses, pointing out one plant after the
other, reading out their Latin names, which were listed on little signs, in a pretentious, erudite
voice that drove me up the wall. She was busy becoming Pamela – an endeavour I increasingly
thought of as ridiculous and delusional.
I trudged after her, bored senseless. Ferns and vines, waterlilies soiled by snail tracks –
where Mimmi saw a world of beauty, all I could see was garden waste and revolting gunk.
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“Look at this super star”, she squealed in front of the Titan Arum, the ostensible reason
for our journey. “Did you know it only blooms every fifteen years? Isn’t that pretty incredible?”
The plant was as big as a desert cactus, completely misshapen and one of the ugliest
things I’d ever seen. I stared at the crinkled petals, which were a dark shade of crimson, almost
black. A cloud of flies buzzed around it and it was surrounded by the stench of decay.
“Sure”, I said. “I guess so.”
*
The only place we could still be bothered to play our parts reasonably convincingly was Tetris.
That night, we squeezed through the crowd, arms linked, only to go our separate ways almost
immediately. I roamed about on my own for hours. I didn’t take any drugs but on the other
hand got decidedly wasted. At the bar, I kissed a guy I didn’t know anything about, apart from
that he was tall and lanky and reminded me of Danny.
Outside the toilets, I stumbled into Becky. I hadn’t seen her in a long time, nor heard
anything since that phone call about her night in the Courgette Man’s house – an event about
which no further details had been forthcoming. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but she
looked the same and I was surprised. Black jeans, big, sparkly silver hoops in her ears that
made her look like a popstar.
“Hiya”, I said. “What’s up?”
“Nothing much. Just waiting for Nadja.” She gestured toward one of the toilet doors.
“I’ve no idea what it is she does in there, but it always takes a fucking age.”
It was hardly the time, but I was drunk and couldn’t care less: “I heard about the
Courgette Man.”
I thought I saw her flinch. But when she replied, she sounded completely unperturbed:
“You know”, she said with a demonstrative shrug of the shoulders, “I’ve already forgotten all
about it.”
Only years later, when the by then eighty-two-year old Courgette Man (or Åke as he
was in fact called) was convicted in a big, notorious criminal case – repeated rape of a fiveyear old in his house in Mälarhöjden – would I learn what had really happened that night. One
of the evening papers had gone through the list of close to one hundred charges made against
him through the years, which for some reason had all failed to go anywhere. It was flashings
and molestations and a few completed rapes, a couple of them using a particular device – hence
his nickname. He’d come at Becky with a wooden cane, beaten her severely and forced her
into the basement. But as he was preparing to sexually assault her, she’d managed to direct a
well-aimed knee at his head. For twelve hours, they’d been locked in a wrestling match, both
on the brink of unconsciousness, repeatedly getting back up and having at each other again. It
was a scenario the police had found so peculiar they’d questioned the veracity of the whole
thing. Becky had reacted by retracting her allegations.
Now she was looking at me with that defiant, confrontational expression that was the
default attitude for girls in our circle.
“He puts his pension money in a drawer in the kitchen”, she suddenly offered. “In case
you were wondering what I was doing there. One time, I managed to make off with three
thousand kronor.”
Risk being raped for three thousand kronor? Just one of countless things from back then
I can’t seem to get my head around now, but which at the time, without knowing why, I just
nodded at.
*
143
An hour later, Mimmi appeared behind me in the open mingling area.
“Did you hear about Adrienne?” she said.
“What?”
“She was hit by a car. Badly.”
“What?”
“A hit and run, apparently. It was really late so no one saw anything. They didn’t find
her until the next morning.”
I just stared at her open-mouthed. “Is she going to be alright?” I stammered.
“No idea. They’ve put her under, tubes and machines everywhere, according to Saga.
She was the one who told me, just now.”
I swallowed hard. Even though I hadn’t given Adrienne any thought whatsoever since
that time when she got in my way at Mimmi’s birthday party, it felt as though Mimmi was
talking about a member of my family. Hit by a car, didn’t find her until the next morning.
Sickening images immediately filled my head: her lifeless body, face down in some muddy
ditch in the grainy light of first dawn, head bleeding, legs at wrong angles.
I was starting to feel queasy.
“I think I might head back to the flat”, I said. “Are you coming?”
She shook her head. “I have something I have to take care of. I’ll head back later.”
But she didn’t.
“Going to a friend’s house, don’t wait up”, she wrote in a text later that night. I stood,
phone in hand, outside the door to the bathroom, roughly where I’d talked to Adrienne. She’d
talked about Los Angeles; I hadn’t listened. A jumble of muddled feelings, guilt and confusion,
passed through me like a cold wind.
*
The next morning I felt miserable, kind of twitchy and wrong somehow. Was it because of
Adrienne? Or was it because I more often than not let alcohol and drugs ravage my body? It
felt like the former and then the latter; with hindsight I’m guessing it was both, but also this:
all of my routines were dissolving and there was pretty much nothing in my existence that bore
any resemblance to a normal person’s life. My hair was filthy, my clothes even worse and I
had trouble keeping the days straight. They came and went, and in the period in-between, less
and less actually happened.
At breakfast, I restlessly drummed my fingers against the folding table.
“Let’s do something”, I said to Mimmi, who had her nose buried in one of her plant
books.
“Not today.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m tired. I got back really fucking late.”
“But later?”
“Why don’t you do something on your own instead? Watch TV, you like doing that.”
Watch TV. Apparently this was how she spoke to me now, as though I were her
annoying little sister. And even so, I did as I was told, went into the living room, picked up the
remote and turned the TV on.
People in a studio; it was some sort of game show. Faces moving in exaggerated ways,
like they were made of playdough, screaming and gibbering on. I had a hard time making sense
of it and the more I tried, the more incomprehensible it became. When a man burst into
hysterical laughter in extreme close-up, I turned the TV off.
I went back into the kitchen. “Hey, can’t we…”
No reply this time.
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“Hello?”
She snapped her book shut and fixed me with a hard stare: “Lollo, I’m tired. I’m not
feeling great. Haven’t I already explained that? I need a few days to myself. That means I don’t
want to talk. Not at all!”
*
I had a vague memory of Mimmi mentioning a need for solitude, something about people
exhausting her, about sometimes just feeling fed up. But this attack was too sudden and too illtimed for me to be able to put things together.
Normally, I was good at keeping myself busy, but not now, not in this state. I spent the
rest of the day glaring at her as she sat studying her books: Useful Plants, 101 Orchids, Growing
Citrus at Home. What was this? Why was she reading about those random things? I slumped
on the sofa like an overaged teenager, hunched over and sullen with my hands in my pockets.
I tilted my head, shoved my hands deeper into my pockets. That’s when I felt the plastic bag,
the one Danny had given me a while back.
Carefully, without alerting Mimmi, I pulled it out. There was still MDMA in it, quite a
bit, actually. I studied the yellowy dust and thought about Danny. Where had he got to? Why
hadn’t we talked again since that night? Then I was suddenly completely overwhelmed by it
all. Nowadays, I would probably have called it anxiety, plain and simple, but back then it was
a new, unsettling voice that seemed to appear from out of nowhere. And it didn’t sound
anything like my own. No one talks to you anymore, it echoed. No one wants anything to do
with you. Get it, no one!”
I remember hunching over further and almost not breathing, as though I thought I could
silence the voice somehow. Then I licked my fingertips and stuck them into the bag. I wasn’t
going to take very much, just a little, because how else could I get through a day like this one?
It seared the back of my throat and I leaned back. At least I had this, I thought, when all was
said and done, at least I had this.
And just at that moment a wave crashed over me, hitting me so hard I nearly slid off
the sofa.
“Lollo, what are you doing? Lollo, what’s wrong with you?”
But none of what Mimmi said got through. I walked out into the middle of the floor,
lay down and closed my eyes, immediately disappearing out into blurred landscapes. The halo
round the lightbulb doubled, quadrupled… It was as though someone had knocked me out and
my brain no longer knew what was up or down, true or false. I heard women singing, children
laughing. For a while, I thought I was on a beach, on the sand at first, then in the water.
Far away, Mimmi’s voice, robotic and fragmented like a television set:
“I don’t know what’s fucking wrong with her… she must have OD’d… she’s just lying
on the floor hyperventilating.”
Then, even further away:
“There there, you’ll be okay… just wait it out I guess… because I don’t want some
fucking ambulance coming here… bloody amateur… I should never have…”
145
24
The first thing I saw was the wall, vaguely green-tinted because the blind, a drab, printed affair,
had been pulled down. It was like rising from the dead; my head was throbbing, sharp jolts of
pain shot through my jaw and eye sockets; my arms and legs were completely numb. I’d slid
down behind the sofa and was dripping with sweat.
When I made an attempt to get up, I heard her frosty voice from across the room:
“Good morning.”
I bolted upright. “But, what –“
She was wearing her glasses again, staring at me sternly from behind the lenses. “You
tell me. You took MDMA, didn’t you? You must have OD’d.”
“I didn’t take much.”
“Clearly you took enough. You’ve been lying there for twenty-four hours.”
I looked at her. “Oh my god, what happened?”
“What happened”, she said, “was, among other things, that you threw up all over my
bathroom.”
“No.” I swallowed hard. Not that bathroom?”
She nodded.
“I’ll clean it up, I’ll –“
“Already done.”
She shook her head and moved off toward the hallway. I have to pick up the dogs, she
declared and fished her keys out of the bowl on the dresser by the door. I’d be fine on my own
now, right? There was left-over potato salad in the fridge, by the way; I should feel free to have
some. Cheers, bye.
Cheers, bye Mimmi. Some people have a heart to heart when they split, some really
don’t. This is what our breakup looked like; I knew that before she even smacked the door shut
behind her.
I just sat there for a long time. I stared at my knees, at a burnt-down candle on the coffee
table. This was strange, too strange for me to even process it. All I knew was that I had to get
up. And so, bracing against the sofa with one hand, I pushed myself up with feeble,
uncoordinated movements. Then dramatic, black spots bloomed on my t-shirt. It was blood. I
touched my nose, wiped it on my shirt. More blood came out, suddenly there was blood
everywhere.
By this time, I’d asked myself countless times if I was losing my grip on things. Was
this game spinning out of control? Should I turn back? But every time I’d dismissed it: No no,
not yet, this was still just a bit of fun and I could stop whenever I wanted. But as I sat there on
the sofa, alone, clutching my bloody shirt in trembling hands, not only was the answer different,
it was more than that, it was a primal scream. I’d gone off the deep end – completely.
*
Mimmi didn’t come back that night. And the next day, she just came and left again straight
away. She had dogs to walk and friends to see, she said. Which is to say men to see – only at
that point was it starting to dawn on me that this was the sole reason for all those hours that
with no notice simply had to be spent elsewhere and away from me.
146
I should, of course, have packed my things and left right then, but I was too tired, so
indescribably tired, and my head was so heavy I just couldn’t. Instead, I recovered as best I
could; I took long showers, drank a lot of water. That night I left the flat, walked around the
block and past the supermarket, where I stocked up on the only drugs available there: coffee
and painkillers, a bag of pick and mix.
As I was queueing for the tills, a girl came up to me.
“Hi”, she said, “it’s nice to see you again.”
“Yeah…”
“We talked at Tetris last week.”
Curly hair, round eyes, a small beauty mark on her upper lip. I’d never seen her before.
*
My last night at Tetris ended up being my worst. I really don’t know what I was doing there,
aside from the obvious reason, that it was Thursday again, a day that had come to mark the
start of the weekend. Mimmi talked me into it. Not because she wanted me there – I was well
aware she didn’t – it was just that diplomatic side of her giving one final convincing
performance. Why not, she argued, it might be nice, right? Better than just sitting around
anyway? And she had a point there. So I nodded, smeared a thick layer of foundation on my
dry face and followed her out the door.
We barely said a word to each other on the way there and even less after we arrived.
Did I want anything? She asked when we were standing by the bar. A beer at least? I didn’t; I
was still way too shaky for that.
I tramped along next to Mimmi for hours, in a state I can only describe as disagreeable.
Maybe it’s true what they say, that it’s possible to have fun without drugs – but if you’re
someone who’s never gone without drugs, you definitely can’t. It was too loud for me and
people were annoying. Everywhere familiar faces: Danny and Michaela; in a corner I noticed
Nicole arguing with another girl about something. But I didn’t want to talk, not with any of
them. And then, as I found myself in a sweaty press of people, anxiety hit me full on. What
was I doing here? Again? Could someone just take me away from here – now.
That’s when the high schoolers turned up. To my immense relief, they were as sober as
I was: bright eyes, bouncy ponytails. I said, which was meant more as an opening line than a
question:
“Have you heard anything about Adrienne? Is she better?”
They exchanged looks.
Saga was the one to respond. “She died. They pulled the plug yesterday.”
The world seemed to stop. The music and the noise, even the scattered dots of light
dancing around us.
“And they say drugs are bad for you”, I heard Mimmi mutter, as if from a considerable
distance. “Cars, they’re such a fucking menace. Bang and you’re done, just like that.”
I’m not really sure what happened afterwards. My guess would be that I wandered about
aimlessly on my own for a while, like I’ve always been in the habit of doing when things are
spinning and I don’t know what to do. I queued for the toilets; someone spilled beer on me. In
the end, I stumbled out the front door, alone and without letting Mimmi know.
*
On my way home, in the gravelly yard just outside the industrial estate, I spotted something
that at first glance looked like a fistfight. It was Nicole – and it was Alex. He was dragging her
147
across the ground; she was crying openly. “You whore”, he hissed, sounding out of breath, “you
fucking piece of shit little cunt of a whore!”
Nicole and her life had intrigued me for months, but now, when I finally caught a proper
glimpse of it, I barely had the energy to watch. I stepped in behind a skip and waited for them
to move on. Something significant had taken place here; I knew that and I should have done
something. But I didn’t.
*
That night I dreamt about Adrienne. I was in an open landscape, not unlike Årsta Field, but
bigger and conjured in deep, byzantine colours. Billowing smoke rose from the ground,
swelling pumpkins on beds of roots. I didn’t know where I was going but I was tired and winded
as though I’d been walking for a long time.
Suddenly, she appeared by my side. Tangled hair, a thin summer dress.
“We have to get out of here”, she said. Her tone was curt and insistent.
“Where are we going?” I said.
“To the other side.”
“But –“
“Now.”
It was only then I noticed the effects of the accident. Enormous, black bruises
underneath her dress, her feet bare and bandaged. She limped severely; her left leg was both
smaller and bloodier than her right. Even so, I had trouble keeping up with her. I was breathing
heavily, my feet constantly sinking into the soft ground. Eventually, I stopped.
Then she started bellowing: “No!”
“What?”
“We have to keep moving.”
But she didn’t want to tell me why. I braced myself and chased after her, now moving
with those strange, floating steps so typical of dreams. The thin fabric caressed her back. For
some reason, I reached out to touch her; my hand grazed her hair, settling on her shoulder. And
then she turned around.
Sooty eye sockets and exposed jawbone; half her face was missing and what was left
was coming off in my hands in loose, rotting chunks. I screamed and stumbled, fell in a drawnout, whirling motion for a long, long time, before landing face first on the ground. Dirt filled
my mouth, and worms and snails, bits of bone and skin. I tried to scream again but I couldn’t…
And then I woke with a start, in the middle of a gasp, just like on film.
The drab blind fluttered, making the dappled pattern on the wall move. It took me a
while to realise where I was, but when I did, the images still didn’t melt away immediately.
For a brief moment, which probably lasted no more than a second but felt considerably longer,
I glimpsed Adrienne’s face in the shadows. A light reflex, sharp and unnatural, jerked across
the floor.
I’d never been scared before; I mean, until that morning, I’d never experienced a
moment of true terror. Now I was sitting there, frozen, on the sofa, pulse racing, staring into
the dark flat without so much as daring to put my foot down on the floor. I have to get out, I
thought. It was time; I was going to leave this place and go home. And then I quickly gathered
up my belongings.
*
148
Outside, an almost painfully beautiful day greeted me. Bird calls and the buzzing of insects,
technicolour leaves rustling in the wind. The air was warm and humid and suffused with
contrasting smells: Japanese barberry and lilacs, asphalt and the sea.
But it didn’t make me feel better. I rubbed my eyes, stuck my hands in my pockets and
shoved open the gate. Halfway down Amaliagatan, I decided to take a shortcut. God knows
why; the shortcut, which ran over a brick wall and through a small patch of forest before leading
up to the customer parking lot behind the supermarket, only seemed more efficient. After
tumbling down the other side of the wall, which was higher than it had looked at first, all my
energy was spent. And in the forest, sharp branches tore at me. Exhausted, I ambled toward the
parking lot, rubbing my scratches.
That’s when I spotted Mimmi, in her dressing gown, passed out on the park bench
outside the supermarket under a veritable mountain of dogs. She was holding the little mini
spaniel she called Coco in her arms; Claus and Beatrix lay by her feet, a gaggle of dachshunds
pulled at a tangle of leads. It was a hilarious scene; she looked like a mother with more babies
than she could handle, weary and drained. The whole time I’d known Mimmi, she’d never been
close to this, quite the opposite; she’d always maintained a kind of persistent freshness. Now
all that was gone, not even her red hair was particularly red anymore; it lay in pale, scraggly
tufts on her shoulders. It was, I thought, like she was wasting away in front of me. Funny in a
way, given that it was the last time I ever saw her.
“So you’re here”, I said when I reached her.
“Looks like it, doesn’t it?” She smiled wanly. “I went home with a guy last night.”
“Was it good?”
She laughed half-heartedly. “If you really want to know then no, not really.” And then
she started coughing drily.
I recalled Michaela and Danny’s story about how they’d met Mimmi in her dressing
gown with the dogs and thought that if the way Mimmmi lived her life had ever seemed
beautiful to me, it didn’t anymore. Mimmi was a lie, it was all lies, and if I hadn’t been so
distracted right then, I would have held them up to the light and confronted her with them, one
after the other. But I was feeling too ill. Something was churning round and round inside me,
it was like a fever, creeping and awful, threatening to break out at any moment.
“I’m not feeling so hot”, I said and scratched at my arms again. “You wouldn’t happen
to have anything on you, would you?” Some E or something?” The words just came out.
“You’re joking, right?” She looked at me incredulously but before I had time to say
anything else she put her hand in her pocket and spread its contents out on her lap: money and
scraps of paper, a wadded up pair of pants. Wrapped in the pants was a bag filled with
something grainy. “There’s a bit of MDMA left in this; it’s all I have”, she said and handed me
the bag with a leisurely movement of her arm that meant: Do whatever you want with it. I don’t
care.
I stood there for a while, without knowing why. Was I hoping she’d ask me to sit? Part
of me still did, I’m guessing. But I needed to get away, far away from Mimmi.
I said, I’m not sure why: “By the way, I saw Nicole yesterday.”
She shrugged. “Okay.”
“She was with some guy. I think his name is Alex.”
“Yeah, she hangs out with him quite a bit, unfortunately.”
“Unfortunately?”
She coughed again. With her face in the crook of her arm, she said: “He’s a lunatic. But
she clings to him for some reason, don’t ask me why. I think she’s imagining that he will rescue
her.”
“Rescue her? From what?”
149
But she was tired and didn’t want to talk anymore. “What do you think, Lollo?” She
sighed and threw up her arms in a gesture of resignation. And then she said, and this was
probably the only sincere thing she ever said to me: “From this, from everything.”
*
As I walked away, I opened the little bag and poured the contents straight into my mouth. I
wanted to let the high kick in before facing my homecoming, let its sweet, numbing warmth
soften me from within so I could think normally again.
But twenty minutes later, I was sitting on a swing in the old, run-down playground, the
one Lidija and I had hung out in a few weeks ago, and was still just as shaky. I rocked the
swing back and forth impatiently. Why was nothing happening? In the end, I pulled my phone
out of my pocket:
“Mimmi, are you sure that was MDMA you gave me? Because I kind of can’t feel
anything.”
“First of all, it’s Pamela, okay?” She sounded properly annoyed now. “Secondly. Of
course you don’t feel anything, the way you’ve been going at it. I told you that doesn’t work,
that you become immune and –“
“What?” I squeezed the phone in my sweaty hand. I could feel panic blooming in my
chest. “Are you saying this is all it’s going to be? But I have to have something. I can’t –“
“Listen to me, Lollo. You either get through this now, you do the shut-in thing, watch
TV, stuff like that. It’ll obviously feel horrible, but you’ll come out the other side a new person.
That’s your best option. Or you can –“
“Yes?” I didn’t want to hear about painful rehab processes. I was just too tired and
stressed for that.
“Take some kind of upper.”
“Upper?”
“There’s tonnes of options there. I think Danny might have Ritalin at home. Or there’s
speed. Would you like some speed?”
Speed? The word alone made me speechless with fear. Amphetamine was the kind of
thing men used, homeless, paranoid men my mum’s age with nerve damage and missing teeth.
Was that the next stop on this route? It just couldn’t be.
“I don’t think so”, I squeaked. “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“In that case”, she said, “there’s nothing I can do.”
“Mimmi, wait –“
I sounded like a fucking child, stupid and desperate, and now I had crossed a line, or
possibly every line. It was over now, between us – I knew that even before she hissed straight
into my ear:
“How many times do I have to tell you? It’s Pamela!”
And then she hung up.
*
I don’t think words can really describe my interminable, agonizing walk home. I knew the day
when Mimmi and I would go our separate was coming, but that it would happen this abruptly
and maliciously was more than I could handle. I tried to remember what she’d told me before,
that there were days when she didn’t want to be spoken to, not at all. Maybe this was just one
of those days? But somehow that didn’t feel like an adequate explanation: things have
beginnings and they have ends, and that was the day our relationship ended, irrevocably. What
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did I have left? Nothing, I thought, nothing at all, aside from the broken, dead-end life that was
mine.
And with those words ringing in my ears, I dragged myself homeward. I felt like
something was falling apart inside me and I had no fight left in me to stop it. I fell down trying
to climb a small set of stairs, really just a step or two. When I got back up, I noticed a cramp
just below my solar plexus. The cramp ascended with every step I took, until it formed a tight
band across my chest. Breathe, just breathe, I told myself, but the more I tried, the harder it
was. A woman with a pram full of food stared at me and my odd, hunched-over posture. Was
I alright? Was everything okay?
“Just fine”, I called to her, “just fine.”
But inside me, a different voice echoed: “Get it together, Lollo, get it the fuck together!”
I passed the giant, deserted brick complex that constituted the westernmost strip of
urbanity before the town centre petered out into residential sprawl. It was said that about a
hundred years ago, a student had killed himself here, under the most melodramatic
circumstances: He’d stood in his window, singing an aria, one of the ones from Othello, before
throwing himself out with a noose round his neck. I’ve no idea if there was any truth to the
story, there probably wasn’t, but the building still always creeped me out slightly. Not today.
When I imagined the tragedy now, the rope, the jump and the instant end, it actually soothed
my manic state. For the first time in my timid, death-fearing life, it hit me: There was always
that option, you could give up; you really could. And then I breathed more easily.
I turned into our yard, punched in the code to the front door. That’s when I heard it, the
sound of students graduating, driving through Aspudden. Laughter and screaming and
pounding music that struck me with the force of a pressure wave. Oh my god, I thought, was it
summer already?
*
Despite my broken state, I was still determined to get home, to my room and to mum whom I
had to talk to and explain things to, yes, explain everything. But she mustn’t see me like this. I
put my key in the door, offering up a silent prayer. To my immense relief, no one was home.
In the bathroom, I was taken aback by my own reflection. My eyelashes were stuck to
my eyelids; in one corner of my mouth there was a deep red mark, the size of a big coin.
Scratches had blended with my eczema, and flared up into angry, wet rashes up and down my
arms. I splashed cold water on my face and arms, tried out a few everyday expressions, but
they made me look mental, straight out of a horror film.
A shower? A shower would help, it always did, I thought, so I peeled off my clothes
and stepped into the little cabin. And then I did something I’d been accused of for years but
had never actually been guilty of before: I used one of Emma’s many name-brand shampoos.
It was a black bottle, big and shiny and somehow brimming with promise. With feeble hands,
I rubbed it into my scalp and let the warm water run down my forehead.
But neither the shampoo nor the shower had the calming effect I’d hoped for and when
I shuffled out into the flat I was still just as anxious. I ended up in my room, sitting on the bed.
My fingers moved restlessly across the duvet. Had anyone called? Please tell me someone had,
anyone, I begged quietly and picked up my phone. But no one had.
And then, from out of nowhere, a haze and a sudden warmth – the drugs were finally
kicking in. The relief of it was so overwhelming I collapsed onto my back. And in that position,
sprawled across the bed with my feet on the floor, I instantly fell asleep.
*
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I’ve never liked sleeping during the day; when I finally awoke from my deep, dreamless
slumber, I felt like a dead person. It was past five in the afternoon. Dizzy and nauseated, I
stumbled out into the flat, where the lights had now been turned on. Where was mum? She was
probably on the balcony and when I found her I would confess everything; I would tell her
about Mimmi, the drugs and the webcamming, anything she wanted to know. And then I would
start looking for a job; tomorrow I would head out and pick up one of those newspaper
supplements in the town centre and start answering ads.
But mum wasn’t on the balcony – and nowhere else either. Instead, I found Emma in
her room, lying on her front on her bed, intently studying her fancy camera. In front of her, by
the headboard, Kelly, her best friend, stood in a deliberate, fixed pose that made the light from
the window hit her with the precision of a spotlight.
“Hi”, I said weakly. “What are you doing?”
They both turned. Identical white t-shirts, new hairdos – Emma in a high ponytail with
a shiny, straight fringe that ended a millimetre or so above her eyes, Kelly in a shorter take on
the same graphic theme. Emma was back on form, I thought, that much was obvious.
“Taking pictures”, Emma said. “Work samples for Beckmans. I had some new ideas.”
“Is it going well?”
“I guess. But the sun’s setting; to be honest, the light’s already gone.”
I looked out the window where the sun, it seemed to me, was shining on undimmed.
All these things that Emma mastered and that I didn’t understand at all.
“Do you know where mum is?” I said.
“No idea.”
“None at all?”
“She’s just out, I guess.”
“Is she mad?”
The question was difficult but necessary. I expected a full account of nagging and
outbursts so furious and desperate they’d probably have spilled over into rowing with Emma
too. But to my surprise she said:
“Not that I know. She’s been away a lot lately. I think she’s met a guy.”
“A guy?”
“Well, what do you want me to call it? It’s someone anyway. She’s pretty secretive
about it and I haven’t wanted to pry.”
I didn’t know what to say. By this time, I hadn’t been home for weeks, longer than I
had ever been away before, but there was nothing to suggest that anyone had noticed my
absence. Emma barely spared me a quick glance and mum’s lack of phone contact had
apparently not been a deliberately passive aggressive tactic but just the simple, natural
consequence of her being busy with other things – like dating. Things carried on here without
me. A while ago, that insight would have made me relieved but now it was just sad. So sad I
almost burst into tears.
The photoshoot was over. Emma popped the memory card out of the camera and
initiated the laborious process of transferring the pictures to her laptop, which was sitting on
her desk. Kelly took a seat on the bed with a sigh.
“Are you applying to Beckmans as well”, I said.
“God no”, she said, seemingly surprised at the question.
“No?”
“Emma’s the artist around here. I’m taking a job as an au pair in the autumn. Then we’ll
see.
Right. I studied the shiny, white room, which looked nothing like it’d used to; the
girlishness had been toned down and replaced by a different, more mature tone. The orchid in
the window was gone; instead, there was a small work of art there now, a cube of polished
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metal. Above the bed, there was a poster I’d never seen before. The motif was unsettling, a
seemingly dead woman with her face in mud and moss. It was a Cindy Sherman – but I didn’t
know that then.
In this sophisticated residence, Emma and Kelly were now moving up and down the
bed and over to the computer where they commented on the pictures, solemn and serious. If
you’d ask me today, I’d say they looked magnificent and unassailable, like two young,
postmodern Clara Bows, kind of. But back then, I felt alone and wretched and all I could see
were things that had nothing to do with me: youth and success, empty perfection in a new,
updated version.
“And another thing!” Emma called after me as I was walking toward the hallway on
leaden, powerless legs.
“Yeah?”
“From now on, please call me Emmy!”
*
I left the flat again, for the simple reason that I just couldn’t stay there one minute longer. But
I didn’t know where to go and had no idea what to do. It was close to six now. I hung around
the town centre for a while, ambling down into the underground because I didn’t want anyone
spotting me.
And suddenly I was in Liljeholmen.
Without really deciding to, I went to the mall and straight to the big cinema complex
on the top floor. A group of kids of about middle school age were on their way into one of the
screens. What are they seeing? I asked the girl at the ticket counter. Finding Nemo, I was told.
“But that’s animated, we have others –“ I told her I wanted to see Finding Nemo and threw
down all the money I had on me on the counter: two flimsy twenties, a couple of coins. It
wasn’t enough for a ticket, but she was cool and gave me one anyway and I ran in, sat down
and let the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen wash over me: sea anemones and blow fish and
tortoises, scenes drawn in nothing but shiny, happy colours, yellow and cyan, jade and pink.
When the main character, a little clown fish, managed to escape the captivity of a tank in a
dentist’s office and make his way back to the sea, I started crying. Maybe Mimmi was right in
saying nature and animals were the best things in the world? That everything else was
parenthetical and trivial, there only to distract?
Uplifted by these abstract, fragile hopes, I left of the cinema and staggered out into the
customer parking lot. The boxwood was in full bloom now, little vanilla yellow tufts that shone
in the fading light of dusk and that somehow seemed to create a magical link between the bright
universe of the film and my own. I took a deep breath and felt the oxygen course through my
body. I was still young, I thought to myself, and the world was beautiful and full of possibilities.
But then an enormous, vibrating thunder cloud loomed up in the sky. Echoes of a distant
rumbling and then, right behind me, the furious noises of a storm in a wild, chaotic symphony.
When the first drops hit my bare arms, I started crying again. But this time there were no
destructive thoughts, no further doomsday predictions about my miserable future. What it was,
was this: a real, physical pain that twisted like a thousand knives in every part of me. My cold,
soaked-through t-shirt clung to my skin, desolate tears squeezed out my eyes with such force
my whole body shook. I couldn’t move, just stand there in the middle of the parking lot, sobbing
and sobbing.
Then everything dematerialised in front of me and I collapsed on the asphalt as though
I’d been shot.
*
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I think I called Mimmi first. I don’t know why and either way, she didn’t pick up.
“Lidija, Lidija, you have to help me because I don’t know what to do. I’m in Liljeholmen
and I’m not okay. And mum’s apparently met some guy… Can we meet up? Please, I have to
see you…”
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25
To my immense relief, she agreed to come out. She needed some fresh air anyway, hadn’t been
outside for days. Glass Pond? In half an hour? It was hardly an effusive response – if anything,
Lidija was curt and mechanical like a switchboard operator – but it was a yes and that was all
I needed. My heart did a backflip in my chest, warmth flowed back into my body as if someone
had brought me back to life. Mimmi would never have done this for me and no one else either
for that matter, I thought to myself all the way back to Aspudden, while my blood hummed
against my eardrums like a roaring spring flood. This was the kind of thing only Lidija would
agree to and it meant something, that we belonged together, that we would be friends forever.
Sometimes, it’s easy to go a bit overboard.
She was sitting on one of the wooden benches when I got there. No makeup, even her
hair was dark and natural for once. I stared at her, stunned. Was this really her? How long had
it been since I saw her? A month? Longer?
But Lidija was less affected by the encounter than I was – or, more accurately, she
wasn’t affected at all. Instead of giving me a hug, she handed me a can of lager from the bag
sitting on her lap and burst out laughing at my bedraggled appearance. What the hell had I been
doing? Swimming? And when I’d summarised select parts of my sticky situation – incoherent
and not even slightly chronological episodes, which included Adrienne and the overdose but
not Mimmi – she blurted out:
“That all sounds terrible, but what I don’t get is what it has to do with me?” She pulled
out another beer and sipped it. “Besides, you have Mimmi, right? I guess she’s like your
girlfriend now or something.”
“She’s not my girlfriend”, I said. “She’s just someone I…” But that’s as far as I got – I
didn’t even know how to explain my relationship with Mimmi to myself. The fact was, I could
no longer explain anything, because as I now made a concerted effort to put the pieces together
into a more comprehensible whole, it all came tumbling down like poorly stacked building
blocks. The overpowering feeling of misery and injustice had dissipated and what was left was
simply incidents, pathetic and devoid of any real meaning. Mimmi? Puddles of vomit in a
bathroom? Who cared? I was completely lost. Minutes ago, I’d been crying my eyes out and
now nothing mattered anymore?
“I also managed to sleep with Danny, by the way”, I said with a feeble laugh. “For a
while I thought I was in love with him.”
She sighed. “You’re not in love, you’re unhappy. And that’s why you’re on some kind
of retarded rampage. You have to get it together, I’ve told you that. It’s the only way.”
“I know”, I said, “I will.”
I could hear what I sounded like, tired and blasé, like a secondary school diva looking
for attention but lacking the sense to spend a second listening to what people had to tell me.
Which was entirely true, of course, I didn’t have the energy to listen, not to anyone. Why had
I dragged Lidija all the way out here? It was just moronic, a move brought on by sheer
desperation, just like all the other ones I was making recently.
Silence fell; a long, uncomfortable silence.
“So how’s things?” I said. “How’s the music thing going?”
She nodded, barely: “Yeah, but there’s so many things I need in order to get started
properly.” And then she explained something about a keyboard and a better microphone than
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the one she had; things that were necessary if you wanted quality recordings; things that cost a
lot of money. Money she obviously didn’t have. “So”, she said, “I guess I’m not really doing
that right now. But Robin and I –“
“Robin?”
She shrugged. “We’re hanging out.”
I wanted to object, but didn’t. It was too late for that now; I knew that. Friends grow
apart to make way to new things, relationships and projects; that’s how it goes; sooner or later
that’s always how it ends.
“So you’re a couple again”, I said finally.
“I guess you could say that.”
You want certain things but in real life it works out differently and sometimes there’s
nothing you can do about that. That was probably my first grownup realisation and it came to
me as I knocked back the last of my beer and stared into the verdant greenery before us. The
lush grass, wet with rain, glistened in the twilight, tousled tufts and clumps of broadleaf
plantain sprouting everywhere. I used to love Glass Pond for its life and contrasts, but now it
was as though the balance had been upset, as though the wild vegetation was finally on the
cusp of erasing every last line. How long had it been since we sat here last? I couldn’t
remember. And then I did; it had been an autumn day last year, an unusually warm one, and
Lidija had sat next to me just like she did now and she’d wanted to talk about us and whether
there was a natural endpoint for the life we led. There was; I knew that now. We weren’t going
to come back here next autumn.
We said very little on the way back, simply because there was very little left to say.
Was this how we were going to say goodbye, Lidija and I? A late summer evening, trudging
along this muddy walking path? It was both horrifying and romantic. I let my hands trace the
dense thickets that surrounded us, looming up like cyborgs in the gloom, over-sized and
dreamlike. The crisp petals of the roses and hyacinths gleamed in bright, hypnotic colours,
seemingly alive and filled with ineffable meaning. I sidestepped some gnarly roots, tripped
ever so slightly and brushed against a thorny bush. It was nothing; it didn’t even leave a mark,
but I slapped my hand hard round my throat, thinking I was actually injured. This was life with
all its painful messages speaking to me, I thought. Everything was lost now; it couldn’t possibly
be communicated any clearer.
Then, just as we reached the allotments, I was yanked from this hallucinatory state;
from a distance came the sounds that had provided the sonic backdrop throughout the day, the
triumphant, ambulating party of graduating high school students. Pumping R&B, a frantic horn.
“Oh my god”, I said, “are they still going?”
Lidija frowned. “I can’t stand that shit. Can’t they just shut up?”
The noise drew nearer. A vehicle, big and loud, passed along the plateau just above us
and now we could make out the music they were playing. It sounded more like a chant than a
song:
My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard
And they’re like
It’s better than yours
Graduating high school, I thought, it seemed so long ago, like a different life. What had I done
since? Lidija and I had used to amuse ourselves by asking that question and throwing anything
offensive we could at it in response: Beer! Stoli! Porn! But this time I was serious. The answer
was that I’d done nothing, that my life, the only life I had, was being squandered out here as
systematically and relentlessly as the nature around us. It wasn’t grief, it wasn’t even boredom,
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it was like some kind of spectral apparition: I told myself I was alive, that I was roaming this
earth freely, when in actual fact I was stuck in the isolated capsule that was Aspudden.
Then Lidija said: “Lollo, what are we doing here? Can you explain it to me?”
“No, I can’t.”
“I hate Aspudden. Why don’t we just leave? Think about it, just you and me.”
Lidija would sometimes mention various journeys, Bulgaria and Greece, the Adriatic
coast, Sveti Stefan – places she’d been to with her parents and wanted to go back to with me,
but that I, for reasons I no longer understood, had always remained unenthusiastic about.
But now I replied: “Yeah, let’s go somewhere. I want to.”
“Have you ever been to Istanbul?”
“Never.” I could feel my heart gathering pace again. It was like an eleventh-hour escape
hatch, a life raft, yellow and bold in the darkness, ready to carry me away from this sinking
ship.
“It’s amazing”, she said. “Kind of doesn’t remind you of anything. The buildings are
incredible, and you should see the food markets. Everything smells like perfume. It’s just like
on TV.”
From this information, my feverish brain immediately started assembling a number of
exotic images: Grand domed buildings and men with shishas, exquisite fabrics and those
powdered sweets Lidija had brought back a few times and that I many years later found out
went by the sacred-sounding name of Rahat lokum…
I often think about those trips, about how differently things might have turned out if
we’d actually gone. We would’ve had a wonderful time, I’m sure of it. And naturally we would
still have been friends. But I’m getting off topic.
*
“So, how’s my little head case doing?” Lidija asked when we’d reached the door to her
building. She dropped her cigarette on the ground without bothering to put it out. “Feeling
better now?”
“Yeah”, I said and meant it too. Granted, I didn’t feel happier, but calmer. My
breakdown in the parking lot suddenly seemed far away. “I don’t really know what happened
before, maybe I just had too much of everything.”
“Maybe too much of that.”
I assumed she was referring to the drugs.
“Yes”, I said, “I’m quitting. All of it.”
“Good. Don’t contact him again, not even once.”
She meant K. I hadn’t had anything to do with him for a while and with things being
the way they were with Mimmi, I figured K was a thing of the past. But I was also broke and
to write off my one source of income once and for all felt overly drastic.
“I’ll think about it”, I said, “I might need the money.”
“Fucking hell. Don’t tell me you’re going to keep doing that?”
“I didn’t say that. All I meant was that it might be good to have it as a backup. I don’t
have any money left, none.”
She pulled a face, as though she were feeling physically ill. “Well, I’m never having
anything to do with any of that again. Getting undressed and just letting him set the terms like
that. Never again, I swear on my life.”
“Isn’t that the whole point? That he sets the terms?”
“No, it sucks. It’s like porn.”
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She was angry now and started moving toward the door. I caught up with her, grabbed
her big, padded arm and pushed my own in under it – a conciliatory gesture which she decided
to reciprocate after a moment’s hesitation.
“I thought we liked porn?”
“To watch, yes. But who the fuck wants to be porn? Jump around like some fucking
puppet just because some creep tells you to. I actually don’t get how you can stand it.”
“But he pays for it.”
“And? He wants sex, right? So why would he be happy just watching? It’s so sick. To
be honest”, she said loudly and sensibly, “if I were you, I mean if it were me doing that. Then
I’d rather fuck him than prance around like some circus animal.”
Why were we talking about this? I had absolutely no idea. And I really don’t know why
I blurted out: “So let’s do it then? Meet him? Mimmi keeps telling me he wants to.”
She pulled her arm free, staring at me: “What?”
“We both need the money, right? Apparently he pays well. And he’s supposedly not
violent either. The calmest of the lot, Mimmi says.”
“Shut up”, she said. “I don’t want to hear it. Not a word.”
But my mouth just carried on talking. Something was at stake here and Lidija was about
to go inside; it couldn’t end like this: “But he might give us loads of money. Maybe enough to
get by on all summer.”
She was standing next to the door now, leaning back against it. Chin in the air, arms
crossed. It was a classic Lidija pose – but I’d never been on the receiving end of it before. With
her lips pursed tight, like an incorruptible school teacher, she said after a moment’s silence:
“Lots of money, huh? Sure, because that’s really what it looks like. So far you’ve made a
fortune, haven’t you? That’s what you said, right?”
“No, but –“
“But what?” She sounded malicious – silky smooth and snide. “Tell me, how much did
you get the last time you took your clothes off, for example?”
The last time? I couldn’t even remember when that was. But then it started coming back
to me, the foggy memory of some tedious, unwieldy, and eventually drunk, evening. Mimmi
had been out on the balcony, on the phone, I’d been on the sofa with the laptop and a crumbly
sandwich. Mimmi had handed me a few notes afterwards, as usual, but there hadn’t been many
of them.
“I can’t remember”, I admitted. “A couple of hundred.”
Lidija rolled her eyes. “See?”
“But we’d obviously get more for this.”
“Obviously.” And at this point she’d had enough of me. She turned around and punched
in the door code. “Let me guess how much we’d get”, she said in a voice distorted by acerbic,
flinty sarcasm. “Maybe even a thousand? Or two?”
“I think more. Four at least.”
“Yippee.” She shook her head. “No thanks. Just, no thanks.” Then she pulled the door
open and stepped inside.
“Lidija, wait.” I caught the door and just stood there, rooted to the spot with my hands
round the handle in an unnatural, stiff grip.
She stopped. “Yes?”
“But…” I stammered, “but… what about the money?”
Suddenly it was as though I could see myself from the outside, hear how pathetic I
sounded, see how my t-shirt, still wet, clung to my trembling body like an old bin bag. I said
something else, I’m not sure what – and then my voice just died. What was I doing? I didn’t
know myself. This was tragicomedy, like something out of a cartoon: Here’s our hapless
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antihero skidding down toward the final precipice, arms and legs flailing, gravel flying every
which way – look at her go!
And then I heard myself burst out laughing, a dry, resigned laughter directed at nothing
and no one at all.
“Lidija, what happened?” I said when my laughing had petered out into weary gasping.
“How did it end up like this?”
“I don’t know, Lollo.” She sighed, the shadow of a smile – laughing brought us
together; it always had.
“Me neither.”
“I guess it’s like I said before.”
“What?”
“That we wanted to be free, kind of. From the whole damn thing.”
I liked freedom. If I hadn’t been able to relate to the concept before, I was beginning to
now. It sounded, to my mind, like a promise, distant but illuminated, a pink cloud at the furthest
edge of the horizon, which you’d reach eventually if you just kept trying. I wanted to try; we
had to try.
“But it’s not enough”, Lidija said. “I’ve realised that now.”
She looked at me and I looked at her. I don’t know if it was the absence of makeup or
the dim, sickly light from the stairwell, but strange shadows fell across her face, making her
look older, grown-up even.
“What?” I said. “I mean, what do you want then?”
She didn’t reply, as though she needed to think about it, as though she didn’t know the
answer to that question.
Eons of quivering, uncertain time passed, or at least that’s what it felt like.
Finally, she said: “The same thing I’ve wanted since I was a little girl, Lollo.
Everything, I want everything.”
*
That night I became aware of Lidija’s strange power over me for the first time. We really didn’t
have much in common, maybe we barely even liked each another anymore, but she had a
unique way of talking to me in a way that calmed my nerves and made my thoughts less messy,
less disjointed. When we parted, we’d made up again and when I got home, I could fall asleep
without several hours of tossing and turning for the first time in ages.
The next morning, the cheerful sound of a lawnmower woke me. My room bathed in
the sharp morning light. It was a radiant Saturday, azure and optimistic. Mum was back – I
knew it before I even opened my eyes.
I met her in the bathroom where she was standing in front of the mirror, putting on pearl
earrings.
“Hi”, I said.
“Well, hi there.”
That’s all she said. No third degree, no questions. Instead she blew a hair from her
forehead, studying herself. The heavy scent of incense filled the room.
“What’s that smell?”
“What?”
“What you’re wearing?”
“Opium.”
“You don’t usually wear perfume, do you?”
“I do now.”
I lingered in the doorway, staring at her.
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Finally, she said: “If you absolutely have to know, I’m seeing someone. I’m meeting
up with him in a while. His name is Alf.”
“Alf?” I tried to sound like this was new and surprising information to me. “Who is
he?”
“A man. I got to know him through work.”
“One of your patients?”
“You could say that, yes.”
The thought of my mum with another man was incomprehensible to say the least. Not
once during all the post-dad years had she spent time with anyone who could, even in the
broadest sense, be considered a boyfriend, much less expressed a desire to meet someone new.
Now I tried to imagine her on these dates she’d apparently being going on, laughing and smiling
like in the movies, putting her hands on his. But the images immediately turned to crude
slapstick and I pushed them away.
“Do you know where Emma is?” I said.
“No.”
“Maybe with Kelly.”
“Yes, perhaps.” For the briefest of moments I thought her voice softened in a vague
attempt at making contact. “They’re always taking photos together these days.”
But that was all the opening she offered. She still wouldn’t look at me and there was
nothing to add.
“Okay.” I released my hold on the doorjamb. “You have fun then.”
From my room, I could hear her making her way out into the hall where she moved
about for a while. When the front door closed, I picked up my phone.
“Lidija, what are you up to? Are we meeting up today?”
We weren’t friends again, not like before, I knew that. But I was prepared to do anything
she wanted just to have a reason to get out of this flat where everything was backwards and
nothing like it used to be.
“I don’t think so, Lollo”, she said. “I’m pretty tired. Besides –“
“Yes?” I held my breath. Anything, Lidija. Anything.
“Hey, were you serious about meeting K? Because Mimmi called this morning.
Apparently K’s been in touch with her several times.”
“What?”
“Yeah. He wants to meet up some weekend.”
“A whole weekend?”
“That’s what I said. What does he think our deal is, anyway, I said; we’re not some
kind of sex slaves. But when she told me how much he’d give us… Listen, Lollo, we’d get ten
grand each.”
“Ten grand?”
“It’s a fucking fortune. Like you said, enough to last all summer, at least. And I could
buy that keyboard.”
She proceeded to listing the drawbacks. There were risks, obviously, but we’d be safer
going together. What could really happen? “He’s hardly some kind of serial killer”, she
muttered, “right? Like, what are the odds of that?”
Her words hovered at a distance; I could barely make them out. It was as though she
was talking to someone other than me, as though life had taken a turn that had finally, utterly
thrown me. And still, I was the one who said:
“Let’s do it.”
Was it because it was a chance to do something with Lidija again? If we did this, we’d
have something to bond over, an adventure and an experience. A bad experience potentially –
but at least it would be shared. Or was it because of the money, a surreal amount, more than I
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had ever imagined? I’m honestly not sure; from this point on, I’m not really sure about
anything.
“You think? Should I call Mimmi and let her know?”
“Yes.”
Then we hung up.
I sank back down on my bed and noticed something hard rolled into the throw at the
foot of it. It was the beauty products Emma had given me and that I’d apparently dumped there
and promptly forgotten about. I picked up a tube, a skin peel with kiwi seeds, as its witty label
informed me: a kiwi fruit with a face, equipped with both a straw hat and sunglasses. I studied
the kiwi face as though I was hoping it would tell me something, the way I’ve always felt that
everything, sentient or not, talks to me. But it didn’t. The world had fallen silent, right in front
of my eyes.
*
The day came and went. I must have fallen asleep because suddenly evening had fallen and I
hadn’t done a single thing. I was hungry and on my way to the kitchen when mum crashed
through the front door. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair tangled; she was clearly drunk.
“Hi”, I said, “did you have a good time?”
I sounded like a parent talking to a teenager. Which is exactly what I felt like next to
her youthful exuberance. In wresting off one of her shoes, a dainty little sandal, she almost fell
over.
“Yes, I’d have to say I did”, she said and started laughing at her own lack of
coordination. “We went to Djurgården. It really is terribly beautiful out there.”
An impulse: I would never have a better opportunity than this, with mum in a good
mood and drunkenly mellow. This was it; we were going to talk, me and her. I would lead her
into the living room, turn the TV on and she would laugh and forgive me before I even got to
the end of my stupid story. It wasn’t too late; this was a turning point for me…
But then her purse started ringing. She pulled out her phone, put it to her ear and
whispered to me: “I’m just going to take this. Talk later, okay?”
Stunned, I watched her stagger through the flat and disappear out onto the balcony.
Prattling, giggling and delighted squeals, like a little girl. Oh my god, I thought. What was with
mum? What was this?
That’s when I heard a ringing coming from my own room, ominous and loud like the
tolling of a church bell.
It was Lidija.
“We’re meeting him.”
It took me a second to realise what she was on about.
“What, now?”
“He’s picking us up in Aspudden in half an hour.”
There was something about a meeting place and other details, but all I caught was the
information about his car (“a BMW”). I guess I must have been conspicuously quiet because
suddenly she asked:
“You do still want to do this? Right?”
Did I? I wish I could give a clearer account of the flood of feelings rushing over me at
that moment. It was the old familiar ones, boredom and restlessness; it was the new ones,
apprehension and anxiety; it was all of those and a thousand more and there was one voice that
drowned out all the others and it was saying: I no longer had a choice, no choice at all.
“Yes”, I said, “of course I do.”
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*
I showered, changed my clothes and snuck out of my room. From a distance, like in a dream,
I could hear mum out on the balcony. She was still on the phone. It must have been an amazing
night, I thought, probably her best ever.
In the hallway mirror, I stared at the face that belonged to me, and the eyes that were
mine: blue and apathetic. A vein, fat like a caterpillar, throbbed in my forehead.
I whispered: And now it’s time for me to go on my date.
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26
What difference did it make? There were people who did stuff like this all the time, real people
who went out and always came back in one piece. In fact, I told myself as we gazed out at the
shadowy, deserted town centre, I’d been living with those people for weeks. And they all came
back, every single time, as predictably as when mum took the bus back from Ersta. And we
would too, of course we would.
The air was smooth and lush. We were standing outside the drycleaners on the other
side of the supermarket, the same place where I’d once seen Nicole get out of a car. It had been
a BMW, and I’d assumed Alex was behind the wheel. But it hadn’t been Alex, I knew that
now; it had been K. The minutes ticked by. He’d be here soon.
The doors to the supermarket flew open and a couple of girls in flip-flops and identical,
powder pink sweatshirts exited. Crisps and Coca Cola in their arms, distracted giggling. They
were on their way out into the pale summer night, their only ambition to consume their
purchases. Once upon a time, that had been us. But it wasn’t anymore. Because we had things
to get on with now, very soon we would have.
“I told Mimmi we don’t stand for just anything”, Lidija said. She flicked a cigarette
butt into the street. “We won’t let him do whatever the fuck he wants.”
I was balancing on the edge of the curb. “No”, I said, “of course we won’t.”
To be honest, though, I didn’t really care. It may sound implausible, but I wasn’t
worried at all. It would work out fine; it always did. Was it the beer I had downed on the way
there? Maybe.
“Anyway, she swore there was no risk of that. Apparently, he’s one of those guys who
wants company more than anything. She watches TV and stuff when she’s there. Sometimes,
she said, they just fuck once.”
“Just once?”
“That’s what she said.” She pulled a jaded, yawny face, as if to say she’d believe that
when she saw it.
Tick tock. Any minute now.
“The only thing I don’t get is why Mimmi called me. Isn’t that pretty weird? I mean
you’re ones who…”
But I didn’t have time to explain it to her. And I never did get around it either.
I was leaning forward over the pavement, almost tipping over, when I heard the sound
of rubber tyres sticking to the dry asphalt. The car pulled up next to us. Black, shiny paint,
tinted windows. The one on the driver’s side was rolled down.
Then our eyes met. I stopped breathing. Light eyes and tanned skin, a small, delicate,
young face. Mimmi was right, he wasn’t ugly, not at all; on the contrary, he was closer to my
old travel catalogue fantasies than I’d dared to hope. A big grin tugged at the corners of my
mouth. Was this all? Could it really be this easy?
“Ilona and Ivanka?” he said, and his voice surprised me. It sounded weak, almost
submissive.
“Lidija stepped forward. “Do you have the money?”
“Now? Before?” The question seemed to surprise him.
She nodded. “How else do we know you’re not playing us? You might just fuck us and
dump us? What could we do about it? Call the police? I don’t think so.”
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Lidija, my Lidija. During my weeks apart from her, I’d almost forgotten how safe it was
by her side, where you inevitably enjoyed a sort of perpetual advantage over others. Even a
situation like this one, she’d somehow managed to leverage. How did she do it? I didn’t
understand.
“Money now or no deal”, she said again and tapped her heels on the pavement. Taptap. Well? What was it going to be?
For a while, he looked like he was weighing his options. His trembling upper lip
revealed that he was hesitating. But then he opened the glove compartment and extracted a
thick envelope, from which he pulled a wad of five hundred kronor notes. He studied us briefly
and then – believe it or not – he handed Lidija the money.
“I think that’s about twelve thousand”, he said. His voice was even weaker now. “That’s
all I have on me.”
She counted the notes, staring at me. What did I think? Yes or no? I guess I must have
nodded because the money disappeared into her pocket and she pulled open the back door.
“Alright, it’ll have to do for now”, she said, “let’s get in.”
And then we did.
The gentle humming of the engine. Aspudden faded away behind us as we headed
south.
The neon lights etched long, red streaks against a sky that was rapidly darkening from
deep blue to black. Traffic signs, the desolate fields. Before long, we were going to pass the
high school. I pressed my face against the window, thinking: This all makes sense. In some
strange way it does.
“Are we going to your place or what?” Lidija said.
He looked at us in the rear-view mirror and nodded. Empty eyes, a small, infantile gap
between his lips.
She drummed her fingers against the seat. “So where do you live?”
Calm down Lidija. Can’t you see he’s harmless, a boy…
I pulled her to me. “He’s actually kind of good-looking”, I said.
“He’s creepy”, she hissed. “I have a bad feeling about this. I don’t think I want to do
it.” Then she grabbed the headrest, pulled herself up and announced loudly: “Turn off here.”
He looked at us in the mirror again. “Here?”
“It’s our old school. We’ll start here. You’ll like it.”
To my immense surprise, he did as he was told, flipped on the indicator, shifted down
and turned.
I could see from afar that the school was lit. Cars were scattered around the parking lot
just like last time.
“But there’s people here”, I said to Lidija when we got out of the car. “We know that.”
She slammed the door shut. “Of course.” And then she wheezed two words right into
my ear, words that I was too confused to comprehend but the meaning of which would soon be
pivotal: “That’s why.”
I started after her across the parking lot and he followed. “Hey”, he called, “where are
you going?”
“We have all weekend, right?” Lidija called back. “So I thought we might do something
a bit special.” She turned and continued, in a tense, strained voice that only just masked the
intense thinking she was doing: “It’s a fantasy of mine, fucking an older guy in my old school.
You’re game, right?”
I smiled, embarrassed. What was this? I didn’t get it. But I had Lidija – and apparently
Lidija had a plan.
His nervous steps and thin voice behind us: “If you say so…”
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I’m not sure exactly when my unflappable mood changed. All I know is that all three
of us stopped by a lamppost and that I took a few steps across the small pool of light. The
ground was littered with cigarette butts, a flattened soft drink can and pale lumps of chewing
gum. In the greenish light, they looked like evidence. Suddenly my stomach flipped. This is a
crime scene, I thought. People get assaulted here. Next to me, Lidija was carrying on the
conversation as best she could. Said something about “floor hockey” and “like, pensioners”. A
rambling assurance followed: “But we’re going to the changing rooms”, “completely empty, I
promise”…
He nodded at this. Restless hands, eyes that kept seeking ours. Up close, his willingness
to compromise was easier to interpret: he wanted sex and it was the only thing that mattered.
He could just as easily have started things off right there and then.
I kicked the soft drink can and stared at the entrance. A fluorescent orange pennant
hung from the door handle. It glowed unnaturally against the background and seemed out-ofplace somehow.
The distant cackling of a seagull was carried on the wind.
That’s when I realised: I didn’t want to do this anymore, not at all.
*
As we passed through the school building, my pulse started racing, spreading a dull, aching
warmth through my chest. My stomach churned, tiny, strange pinpricks all over me. What were
we doing here? I couldn’t go through with this and I had to tell Lidija. But she was some ways
ahead of me and, with my body and mind seizing, seemed hopelessly out of reach. Then
abruptly and for no reason, I felt calm again. He wasn’t ugly. I just had to do it. Just do it.
We passed the gym, where a floor hockey game was underway just like last time. The
players were flagging; no one looked twice at us. Lidija even risked a loud joke: “Thinking of
giving that a try someday”, she blared, “or maybe not”. He laughed nervously at that.
I drifted after them down the corridor. The pipes, the same stuffy, vaguely metallic
smell as last time. Someone, I assume it must have been Lidija, opened the door to one of the
changing rooms.
I parked myself with my back against the sink just outside to the toilet door. He sat
down on the bench.
“Right”, Lidija, who’d taken up position in the middle of the room, said and smacked
her palms against her thighs, “so what would you like to do?”
Then everything happened very quickly. Mumbling and a quick wave. She got down
on her knees and started sucking him off with joyless, mechanical movements. I stared at them,
stunned. What was this? Could this really be how it happened? A string of saliva dribbled down
her chin. The sight of it seemed to arouse him and he picked up the pace. Her eyes were
completely dead. She hated it; she hated it with a passion. Lidija, stop –
And suddenly, she did, got to her feet, wiped her mouth and pointed at me:
“Your turn.”
My turn.
I hoped against hope that my unflappability would return, numb me, fog things up a
little. But as he took a few steps toward me, I realised I was stuck in the other state again, the
one where all my senses were screaming and my whole being shrank from what was coming.
He ran a hand through his hair, said something. We looked at each other for a long
moment – at least it felt long to me. I was rooted to the floor. It was only now, only in this
charged, absolutely silent moment, that I truly saw the man I’d been chatting with for hours,
fantasised about and shown myself naked to. And it started to dawn on me why our relationship
had petered out and morphed into a crass exchange of services. Not because he was
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unattractive, he really wasn’t. But he was just all wrong, a human being who had so little in
common with me that I couldn’t relate to him on any level; he was a realtor or a bank guy,
some guy in school whose name I wouldn’t be able to recall if my life depended on it. He
wasn’t the enemy; he was nothing at all. And for some reason that was much, much worse.
I turned around, mostly so I wouldn’t have to look at him. Then I grabbed the sink and
said in a fragile voice: “We can do it from behind.”
His damp hands around my thighs. My pants came down and he pressed himself against
me.
I swallowed hard. It hurt, but not too badly. This was okay, I thought, this was bearable.
I rocked back and forth with his movements, staring at the sink: finger prints on the tap,
a small metal paper clip in the drain.
The sounds of his body slapping against mine. His heavy breathing.
Think about something else, Lollo, just think about something else.
Then I felt a hand on my clitoris. Rough, clumsy strokes. What was he doing? Was he
trying to get me off? It wasn’t even close to pleasurable; it was sheer agony. A coarse finger
pushed against my pee hole and a jolt of pain shot through my whole body.
Think about something else. Just think about something else.
I looked at the paper clip, tried to focus on it, its shape and colour: it was copper; it had
rounded corners… But I couldn’t. My legs were shaking, my eyes were filling with tears. A
dot appeared in my field of vision and every time his body slapped against mine it grew bigger
until it covered everything like a dark film. I couldn’t orient myself in the room anymore; the
walls were moving, opening and closing again.
And then everything went dark.
How long did he go at it for? I don’t know. I’ve no idea.
“For fuck’s sake. That’s enough.”
The words cut through the fog in waves before I managed to make them out. It was
Lidija.
He let go, or at least I assume he did because suddenly I was lying in a tangled heap on
the floor. Jeans and pants like a noose around my knees, gravel everywhere. I crawled about,
trying to get to my feet but failing. When I turned around, I saw K and Lidija standing a few
feet apart, gesticulating wildly. Their agitated voices rebounded around me:
“Are you blind? She doesn’t want to.”
“But we had a deal.”
“What do you mean, deal, that doesn’t mean –“
“But I fucking paid you –“
His tone scared me. He no longer sounded harmless, he sounded genuinely lethal. And
now the invectives started flying: “Fucking whores”, “Little cunts, thinking you can just –“
And it was at exactly that point, in this escalating turmoil, that I remembered all the
things I had supressed until now: that you were not at all guaranteed to return in one piece, that
I actually had ample evidence things could just as well go incredibly fucking wrong. I thought
about Mimmi and all her bruises. And Becky, what had actually happened to her? Frightening
visions of what must have taken place that night at the Courgette Man’s house flashed by like
images in a frantic music video.
His face was a pale grimace. Cunts. Whores.
Oh my god, he’s going to attack us, I thought; he’s going to kill us right now. I have to
do something. But what? What the fuck could I do?
Then I heard Lidija say:
“Don’t you think we’ve met people like you before? Don’t you think we know how to
deal with a perv like you?”
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She spoke in a frosty, elevated version of her own voice, as though she were on stage.
I’d never heard her sound like that before.
She paused briefly before continuing: “Do you know what we’re going to do now? I’ll
tell you. We’re going to walk away. And you’re not going to follow us. Because if you do,
we’ll scream. Got it? We’ll scream and you’ll be in trouble. Deep fucking trouble.”
“We’re going to walk away.” My frenzied brain was trying to process her words. What
did she mean? Did she mean that…?
My jeans, I have to get them back on. Shit, how hard can it be to pull on a pair of
fucking jeans… Wait for me, Lidija, I’m coming, I’m coming…
*
But of course we didn’t walk away – the moment the door swung shut behind me, we started
running and didn’t stop.
I only remember random details: my legs felt weak and wobbly and kept wanting to
buckle; the ground was uneven and I lost one of my shoes. Worst of all was the background
noises that seemed to have been cranked up to hellish levels: the wind howled and the gulls
screeched, the distant sound of a car engine starting. Was that him? Was he actually going to
come after us?
But he didn’t.
Lidija stopped first. “God”, she gasped, “we’re alive, right?”
The brick complex and the big sculpture of a woman, their familiar contours against
the almost black sky, dreamlike and staggering. The sculpture, it seemed to me, was bathed in
a faintly blue light and this strange monument that had never before meant anything to me now
shone like a beacon in the night. We were alive; apparently, we really were.
For a long time, neither one of us spoke; we just walked. The asphalt felt warm and
pleasant through my thin sock. A jumble of irrelevant thoughts fluttered past: I was very hungry
and even thirstier. Was the hot dog stand still open? What time was it anyway?
Then I saw the blue light again.
“There’s a light over there”, I said, “can you see it?”
“Yes”, Lidija whispered, “what is it?”
When we got closer, we realised it was the lights of emergency vehicles splashing
sharply across the surrounding facades. An ambulance and several police cars were parked in
the main square. A group of locals stalked around among them impatiently. A hushed murmur
of voices. “Is she going to be alright?” someone asked.
I took a few steps forward. I instinctively knew who they were talking about and what
had happened. I said her name, several times. No one listened.
People and lights everywhere; anonymous squiggles of colour moving every which
way. It looked like a scene from a film, hectic and crowded but silent, somehow artificial.
Finally, a blurred silhouette appeared at the edge of my vision, an older woman:
“Look, girls, I don’t think you should be running around outside right now.” Her voice
was sharp but it took a moment before it got through to me. She raised one arm in the air.
“Because apparently there’s a killer on the loose!”
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Epilogue
168
That night, my sleep was as hollow and fragmented as my waking state the next morning. My
mind was a complete blank and the only thought I could summon was the same as before: that
I was hungry. I ate some leftover lasagne I found in the fridge and had a shower. Drying myself
off, I noticed my right foot was full of cuts and bruises. It was probably a sight to see, but at
that point, that morning, I was indifferent. The rest of the day just passed me by. It rained
outside. I watched TV. The local news did a short segment on Nicole.
They’d found her collapsed in the square with over twenty stab wounds in her back and
stomach. Him, they’d found after a short search, at home, knocked out in his bed, even bloodier
than she was, with a hand he’d bandaged up himself and at least four illegal substances in his
blood. The police considered it an attempted murder, the reported explained, which startled
me.
“Have you seen this?” Emma called from the living room as the same story played on
the evening news.
I went out to join her. “It’s Nicole, isn’t it?” I said.
She nodded. “Kelly told me about it this morning.”
And then she shared the parts of the Nicole and Alex story she’d managed to glean over
the course of the day, things that more or less simply confirmed what I already knew. They’d
been hanging out together for over a year, though no one knew why. There was a family
connection, but it was a very tenuous one (much later I would hear someone use the wildly
vague term “step uncle”).
“Apparently”, Emma said, “Nicole would see this old man sometimes. Somehow Alex
found out.” She shook her head, as though there wasn’t a syllable of that she was comfortable
with.
“Is she going to make it?”
“No idea. Kelly said they’re operating on her tonight.”
I went back into my room, lay down on the bed and suffered through one of the longest
nights of my life. Grim thoughts about life and death and the meaninglessness of everything.
Dazed with loneliness, I sat up. I called Lidija but she didn’t pick up. Outside, the rain kept
falling.
*
I didn’t hear from Lidija until the end of the week, a clear sign that the past few days had hardly
had the reuniting effect on our relationship I’d hoped – and I suppose that wasn’t really such a
surprise. She was in the area, she said, could she stop by?
Fifteen minutes later, she was sitting at the foot of my bed with a plastic bag from a
pharmacy wrapped round her wrist. A red knitted jumper with gold thread that I’d never seen
before and shiny, black nails. All the tiny changes in style and appearance that she used to try
out and evaluate with me once. Now she no longer did.
“I’ve just come from the clinic”, she said after a while. “I thought I was going to cough
my lungs up this morning so I figured it was time. They claim I have pneumonia.”
“Pneumonia?” I said. “Isn’t that serious?”
A wry grin. “You’re thinking I’m about to kick it, don’t you? Sorry, not just yet.” She
pulled a pack from the bag. It said Penicillin V Fruit. “But apparently I have to take these now.”
She threw me the box and I ended up just sitting with it in my hands. I didn’t know
what to say so I said: “Check this out.” I took my sock off and waved my still bruised and
battered foot around.
“Oh my god, when did that happen?”
“I actually don’t know, at some point while we were running. I must have stepped on
something sharp without noticing.”
169
“Yeah”, she said, “it all happen pretty fucking fast.”
A pause, probably insignificant, but my brain perceived it as long and reserved.
“Right, before I forget –“ She put her hand in her pocket. “Here, your share.”
It was the money from K. I looked at the notes, which were completely smooth and
rolled up. I would have thought they’d feel dirty and unpleasant to hold, but they didn’t, quite
the opposite. They seemed like a symbol of something to me, our friendship perhaps.
I breathed: “Thank you, Lidija.”
She shrugged. “No need to thank me, it’s your money.”
“I don’t mean that, I mean for everything. For…”, I searched for words that were not
entirely easy to say: “saving me.”
“Oh that.” Her face took on a disapproving expression. She sighed: “I should have done
something sooner, but everything was such a mess. It was hard to think clearly.”
At this point, I imagined the weird ice between us was about to thaw, that we were
about to talk for real, about that night and about us. What were going to do now, for example?
But it was as though something was holding us back, as though there was neither time nor
space enough.
“You don’t think he’s going to come after us, do you?” I said.
She shook her head. “Don’t worry, he’s not the type. He’s a sissy, I could tell straight
away. Otherwise I wouldn’t have had the guts to blow the whole thing off.”
“And you’re sure?”
“Completely.”
She got up and started to fiddle with the books on my shelf, pulling one of them out.
Suddenly she said, her eyes firmly on the book cover: “Hey, I’m going to Belgrade on
Wednesday.”
I knew she was planning to go; she’d told me several times. But it still took me by
surprise. “Wednesday”, I mumbled, “that’s soon.”
“Yeah, it’s going to be a bit tight. But I found a super cheap ticket, it was only eleven
hundred.”
“How long will you be gone for?”
“Don’t know. Not long.”
And then she had to leave again. She had a lot to sort out before her trip; she’d promised
Ana to help give the flat a proper clean and needed to buy a bunch of stuff, clothes and a new
suitcase. I offered to go shopping with her. No, she said, she’d be fine on her own. Did I know
I’d never see her again? I actually think I did. She was done with me and us; other things were
beckoning: Robin and her music, friends who were into music, probably.
Even so, we barely said goodbye. Isn’t that how it always goes? That you let the
important farewells slip by because you just can’t stand them. I was hanging on the door handle;
she was standing in the stairwell, restlessly bouncing her bag against her thigh. She’d had a run
in her jumper, which strangely enough only made it look better; the gold threads in it sparkled.
A quick hug. And then she was gone.
A week or so later, I had a text. She was going to stay in Serbia for a while, she wrote,
probably until the end of the summer. Her parents had bought a house in Slankamen, a small
holiday town by the sea: “It’s awesome here. I go swimming every day. Come visit if you
want.”
“If you want.” I stared at the paltry words. The Lidija I’d known once would have been
loud and insistent, closing her text with exclamation points and “molim te” several times over
– this didn’t even amount to a proper invitation.
And yet, for a few days I considered it. Maybe not everything had to be so complicated.
It could just be for old times’ sake. Besides, I was loaded now – it was actually just a matter of
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sitting down and buying a ticket. And maybe I would have done, it if it hadn’t been for what
happened next.
*
The phone rang on a Monday; I remember because mum had knocked on my door that morning
and shouted a greeting I hadn’t heard in a long time: “New week, rise and shine!”
The caller introduced herself as “Jennifer from Expressen” and spoke so rapidly and
sounded so contrived it took me a while before I realised what she was on about. I had probably
heard about the stabbing on Hägerstensvägen, right?” (I said I had), and wasn’t it just awful
(yes, I thought so). And then she hit me with it: There was reason to believe the case was related
to “a prostitution ring” and “a new, dangerous youth culture”, the whole thing was “very
serious” and her paper was going to write about it.
It felt like someone had lowered a weight onto my throat. I stood there, receiver in hand,
unable to get so much as a word out. Should I hang up? In a voice that sounded nothing like
my own, I told her that I knew nothing about any of that. She believed I did, though, she replied,
because she had certain information, “facts”. Wouldn’t it be better if I could tell my story in
my own words? They were obviously prepared to protect my identity if I preferred. Redacted
visual material and a fictive name, all that stuff could be sorted out. She sounded different now,
very friendly but deceptively smooth, like a doctor promising a cure, salvation, only to turn
around and put an ice pick in your eye.
This time, I did hang up.
*
Two years later, I started writing. I still lived at home then and it happened on one of the
countless days when my room felt cramped and claustrophobic and yet nothing outside it
seemed interesting enough to make me want to leave it.
I was watching TV in bed and accidently dropped the remote on the floor; when I went
to pick it up, I happened to spot my old diary in the mess under my bed. I flipped through my
notes for a while; they were more numerous and detailed that I remembered. It wasn’t a
therapeutic thing, in the sense I assume you’re imagining, it was more like a symptom of stress,
a desire to fit the pieces of my story into a coherent whole, while I could still remember. I’d
spent the whole summer hearing them retold by others and in the end, they’d morphed into
something so alien I didn’t know up from down, true from false. During a few intense days, I
wrote down everything I could think of, until I was exhausted and threw the diary back in under
the bed. And under the bed is probably where it would’ve stayed, had it not been for the fact
that I shortly thereafter met Elena.
Moving in with her in her studio flat in Västertorp was half-hearted on my part; I didn’t
think it would last. Over the years, I’d started a number of relationships with various women,
and all had come to the same miserable end; they thought I was boring and introverted, “kind
of absent”, as someone put it. Which of course, was entirely correct.
But Elena held onto me. After a month, she put my name on the front door, after two,
she turned over the little alcove to me (“You’re home a lot more than me anyway”). And now,
it’s been six years. She claims I amuse her, that she enjoys my unassuming, precise sense of
humour. Besides, she’s too busy with the university and all her friends to have the energy for,
as she likes to put it, “fucking coupledom”. To put it simply, you might say she reminds me
enough of the people who shaped me to make me feel safe.
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I’ve told Elena things I never dared tell anyone before, about my constant, nagging
feeling of being a waste of space in this world. About other anxieties, about the few dreams I
have. Like the one about writing. She was the one who made me sit down and do it.
“You have to write”, she commanded, as I was flipping through that diary again, trying
to decide whether to throw it away or transcribe it properly, “that’s how people like you
function, you’re not meant to run around yakking.” And one night I decided she was right,
tidied up the alcove, put my laptop on the table in there and sat down.
What else is there to say?
Lidija eventually returned to Aspudden, though thankfully not until the after the
summer, when all the hoopla had died down. (Did she ever find out? I honestly don’t think so.)
She makes pop music now. Her already broad vocal range naturally turned out to encompass
further unique aspect, her voice is the main component of the “eclectic soundscapes” a reviewer
praised in an online magazine. She broke up with Robin again. “I didn’t think of him once the
whole time. It must be a sign, right?” she wrote in a text just before coming back. We were in
touch a fair bit at that point and made some attempts to get together. But we never got around
to actually doing it, something always came up. And one day, the attempts stopped too. It was
weird and still, somehow, completely natural.
Mimmi moved away that same summer; I don’t know where to. People said she’d
become an actress, that she’d joined a small amateur ensemble that was touring somewhere up
north. That would suit her, I thought bitterly, full-time playacting. I was angry with her for a
long time, for the lies and for introducing me to K, and I was often tempted to tell people about
her dodgy dealings whenever her name came up in conversation. But something always
stopped me.
Only much later, an evening the following year, did I understand what it was. I was on
Amaliagatan and out of old habit my eyes strayed to the balcony, the one I still thought of as
our balcony, which obviously wasn’t that anymore. I studied the unfamiliar objects that
populated it now, outdoor furniture and trellises, a clutch of ridiculous rice paper lamps that
gently nudged one another. Suddenly I was overcome with an overwhelming longing. I think
we lived together for maybe four weeks, and that I held her in my arms no more than three
times – but then and there, it had felt like so much more; it was as though a whole life had been
lost. And I’m brave enough now to say this: I loved Mimmi, for real. I even think she was my
first real love.
Her mum had been beaten to death, by the way. Some boyfriend and a fit of jealousy,
the usual thing. I can’t remember how I found out.
And this was where I had planned to wrap this thing up. Ćao and so long, thanks for
listening etc. But there’s actually one thing I have to add, a relatively recent event as a matter
of fact. Let’s call it an encounter, or a kind of reunion – even though I realise that was hardly
how she saw it.
It was last winter, late one night at Liljeholmen underground station. Elena and I were
on our way home from a party, a farewell thing for one of her best friends at uni. I was
hammered and cursing the train for not showing up. Why was it always like this on the red
line? Goddammit it, another two minutes and I’d freeze to death!
That’s when I spotted a familiar silhouette some ways down the deserted platform.
It was Nicole. Fully alive and wearing as much makeup as ever, she was on her own,
leaning against a pillar, smoking. Since the stabbing, I hadn’t seen her once, not even really
heard anything about her. Some people claimed she’d died of complications from her surgeries,
others that she’d survived but fled the scene. All in all, I’d assumed she sort of no longer
existed in the same realm as me. But here she was, in the same part of town as me, even at the
same underground station.
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Being agitated already, the sight inspired an immediate sense of belonging in me. It was
as though I’d found the answer to the riddle, that missing piece of the puzzle I needed to come
to terms with something, what, I don’t know, maybe that whole messed up period of my life.
“Nicole?” I said and went up to her.
She dropped her cigarette on the ground, crushed it with the toe of her boot and looked
up. “Yes?”
I grabbed her hand, perhaps slightly overenthusiastically, and introduced myself. And
then it all just rushed out of me: Aspudden, Mimmi. Did she remember? She did, right?
Cold air, whirling snowflakes. Under the sharp lights of the station, her skin shimmered
white and smooth, not a scratch, not a trace of anything.
She looked at me for a moment. “You know what”, she said, “I never think about that
anymore. Never ever, actually.”
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