Betrayal

He had stayed with Anna after Yvonne Palmgren left them in peace. The only time he left the room was when he used the microwave in the staff room to heat up his lunch. He wondered how many Gorby’s pirogi and pizza slices he had eaten in the past two years, but hurried back in to Anna before his mind would force him to calculate the exact number.

Two months had passed, then three. His mother still stayed locked in her room. The compulsion controlled his whole life, but escaping from this mute punishment would just make everything worse. After those nine words, the silence continued. Each night he would hurry off to deliver his newspapers and then rush back home so that she wouldn’t have to be alone. His father stayed away. Now and then, but not very regularly, a letter would arrive with a few thousand-krona notes to pay the bills for the heating oil and electricity. There weren’t very many other expenses in the household. He took money for groceries from his own wages. The house belonged to her, she had inherited it from her aunt. The income from Pappa’s job as a plumber had been all they needed to cover the costs in the family; his mother had never needed to go out and work. Her entire identity revolved around her role of wife to her husband and mother to her son.

It was a Tuesday when he discovered the classified ads, and it all started with a catastrophe.

Every night the same ritual. He would collect the bundle of newspapers down by the pizzeria. There were always a few extra copies, and before each night’s delivery he counted the copies so he would only have to take with him the exact number he needed. It was the only way to be completely sure that he hadn’t missed someone’s letterbox. He could never be entirely certain, though; many days the worry had pursued him when he imagined that he had skipped one subscriber and delivered two papers to another.

First he would count out the sixty-two papers he needed directly from the bundle. Then he took out the plastic sheeting he kept in his backpack to protect the newspapers from getting wet. After that he piled them up in six stacks of ten. He placed number sixty-one and sixty-two directly in the pouch on his bike rack. When he had checked the stacks of ten four times, he was ready to put them in the pouch and get going. Always exactly the same route.

And then, on this particular Tuesday, the unforgivable happened.

He had one copy left over.

Someone had been missed out.

It was easy enough to check the letterboxes at the houses, but what if someone had already managed to collect their paper and it wasn’t their box that had been skipped? And what about the ten flats in the building above the pizzeria that had slots in their doors? How would he be able to see whether it was one of them he had missed?

He felt the panic rising.

The leftover paper burned in his hands and he couldn’t get rid of it. He stood there on the steps outside the front door when he came home, and he still had the newspaper in his hand.

Sandviken to Falun 68, Skövde to Sollefteå 696.

He had to read it. He had to read every single word in it to neutralise the mistake.

He sat down on the steps. It was just beginning to get light. The stone steps were cold, and as soon as he had finished the first page he was so cold he was shivering, but he had to keep reading. Each individual letter of every word had to be seen and respected by the eye of a reader. That was the only way.

It was on page 12 that he found it.

‘Postman wanted for the Stockholm district.’

At first the words seemed much too implausible, but again and again his eyes came back to them, and after he had read them eight times they were finally transformed into a possibility.

He knew that he couldn’t keep living at home. The only way to make her start to live again was for him to disappear. He was watching over her, but she didn’t want him there.

He looked out over the garden. The once well-tended perennials in the flower beds lay withered on the ground, helplessly tangled up with weeds.

He was the one who was the weed.

I don’t want you to live here any more.

On page 16 everything fell into place. He was meant to have one paper left over on precisely this day, something had seen to it that he would be the one who was forced to read it. For once the compulsion had been on his side.

‘1 room w/o kitchen, Sthlm, for rent to reliable person – moving abroad.’

He sat for a long time on the steps that morning. Later he made the two phonecalls, and four days later he took the train down to Stockholm to go to the job interview. He was back the same evening; she didn’t even notice he was gone. The following weeks were one long waiting period, but he knew that it was all pre-ordained. When the positive news arrived that he had got the job and the room, he took them both as a matter of course. Proud that he had dared.

He hesitated for a long time outside the closed bedroom door that evening before he finally knocked. She never told him to come in. At last he pressed down the door handle anyway and opened the door a crack. She was lying there reading. The blue shade was pulled down and the bed lamp was lit. She pulled the covers up to her chin as if she wanted to hide. As if an intruder had entered her room. The single mattress on the double bed frame that was twice the width was a reproach. She slept next to an empty space that always reminded her with the most blatant clarity of the degradation and betrayal they had caused her.

‘I’m moving to Stockholm.’

She didn’t reply, just turned off the bed lamp and turned over on her side with her back to him.

He stood there for a while, incapable of saying anything more. Then he backed out and closed the door.

The last thing he saw was a glimpse of her flowered robe.

Yvonne Palmgren arrived at one minute to two. Greeted him curtly and then went to sit down in the chair by the window again. She wasn’t smiling this time. She examined him with a gaze so intense that he regretted agreeing to the first conversation. He took hold of Anna’s hand. Here he was safe.

‘I’ve made a few calls this morning.’

‘All right.’

One of the four neon-coloured pens in her breast pocket was missing.

Three! Oh no!

He wondered whether she knew. Whether with her solid psychological training and penetrating gaze she could see straight in to his well-concealed hell. The three pens were a sign, a way to weaken him, a declaration of war from her side to prove her superiority.

He squeezed Anna’s hand harder.

She opened the plastic folder. Read a few words and looked at him again.

‘I want to talk about the accident itself.’

The sudden feeling of encroaching danger.

‘I know that you stated that you have no recollection of the accident, but I want us to try to piece together your memories. I have the police report here.’

The woman in the chair regarded their intertwined fingers.

‘I understand that this seems like a lot of trouble. Perhaps you would rather we talked about it somewhere else? We can go to my office if you like.’

‘No.’

She sat in silence for a bit. Her eyes penetrating.

‘I don’t remember.’

‘I see that’s what it says on this paper, but the truth is that you’ve chosen not to remember. The brain functions to protect us from traumatic experiences, it chooses to repress things that are too painful to remember. That doesn’t mean that you don’t remember: everything is still inside. Sooner or later it will come to the surface and you will have to deal with it, no matter how painful it might be. And that’s precisely what I want to help you do. Help you remember so that you can move on. It’s a difficult and painful job you have ahead of you, but it is absolutely crucial. You will most likely feel angry during our conversation, but that’s all right, as long as you let your anger out. I want you to direct it to me for the time being.’

Not in here! Never before had it ventured out when Anna was present and protecting him.

‘Do you understand what I mean, Jonas? I’m here to help you, even if it doesn’t feel that way. Anna is dying and you must accept that. And you must accept that it’s not your fault, that you did the best you could. No one can ask any more of a person.’

Kalmar to Karesuando 1664, Karlskrona to Karlstad 460.

‘All I know is what I read in the police report, and of course the hospital protocol when she was admitted. That she was struck by anischemic brain damage due to lack of oxygen. What’s the last thing you remember?’

Landskrona to Ljungby 142. Help me, Anna. Stop it!

‘You had gone down to Årstaviken to eat lunch. Can you remember what day that was?’

‘No.’

‘Try to remember what it looked like. The trees, did you meet anyone, did it smell a certain way?’

‘I don’t remember. How many times do I have to tell you that?’

‘You went out on the pier at the Årstadal Boat Club.’

He had to put an end to this conversation. Had to get this woman out of the room.

Her voice droned on without mercy.

‘Anna decided to go for a swim even though it was late September. Can you recall if you tried to stop her?’

She was blocking Anna’s defence.

‘You stood and waited on the pier. Can you recall how far out she swam before you realised she was in danger?’

Anna’s head under water. Trelleborg to Mora. Damn. Not three. Eskilstuna to Rättvik 222.

The three neon pens on her large bosom were like a screeching reproach. The relentless voice that filled up every space inside him but mercilessly kept grinding away without noticing that he was about to explode.

‘When she disappeared you swam out to try and help her. Another man came by and saw what was happening. He swam out to try and help the two of you, do you remember his name?’

‘I don’t remember!’

‘His name was Bertil. Bertil Andersson. The man who helped you. The two of you managed to get her to the beach and Bertil Andersson ran to the boat club to ring for an ambulance. Try, Jonas, try to remember how it felt.’

He straightened up. He couldn’t take any more.

‘Don’t you hear what I’m fucking saying, woman? I don’t remember!’

She didn’t take her eyes off him. Just sat calmly in her chair, watching him.

He found her in the attic. She had the flowered robe on and it was the evening before he was going to move away. His bags were already packed and waiting in the hallway. The ceiling was low and she hadn’t needed a chair, only the low plastic stool that he had used as a child to reach the washbasin.

‘How does it feel now?’

Her words drove him over the edge.

‘Get out of here! Get out and leave us in peace!’

She remained sitting there. Didn’t move from the spot, but kept on boring through him with her evil eyes. Calm and collected, firmly resolved to crush him.

‘Why do you think you get so angry?’

Something burst inside him. He turned his head and looked at Anna.

She betrayed him. She lay there so innocent in her unconsciousness, but she had apparently not forgotten how to betray him. Once again she intended to leave him, alone. After all he had done for her.

Damn it.

He couldn’t trust her even now. Even now she wouldn’t do as he wished.

But he would show her. He wouldn’t let her go.

Not this time either.