The Cruel Stars of the Night

Eighteen

What surprised him was not Laura’s pale skin that looked as if it never saw the sun, or the exquisite body that she had always managed to conceal beneath layers of clothing that betrayed a lack of attention to color and finesse. It was the abundance of hair.

He pulled his hand down her belly, his index finger tracing a dark line down to the luxuriant tendrils and swirling it around.

“Should I braid it?” he asked, turning his head and looking at her.

He had no idea what she was thinking and right now he didn’t really care. He was still caught up in the physical rush, now mixed with a satisfied indolence, after the release of desire and a feeling of revenge.

Stig chuckled. She closed her eyes.

Laura had said at most ten words since he arrived. When he commented on the massacred bookshelves she shrugged and pulled him closer. She was dressed in a flowery dress that he imagined was very old. It reminded him of his grandmother’s summer dresses.

The ghost-like house, Laura’s silence, and the tense anticipation he felt made him talk. He talked about work, what the Germans had e-mailed and what he had replied. She did not seem interested.

Stig started to get cold.

“Laura,” he whispered, “I have to go soon.”

She opened her eyes. He saw the whites.

“We’re going to have dinner,” she said.

“I don’t have time.”

“Ribs.”

“I have to go,” he repeated.

Her eyes moved anxiously.

“Are you cold?”

He pulled up the covers and carefully draped them over her breast, got up on his knees and kissed her stomach and drew the covers further up over her body.

“You have to stay,” she said.

“I can’t.”

He got out of bed. She stretched out and grabbed his elbow, looking him in the eyes.

“It’s you and me, Stig, right?”

He nodded. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, put her ear against his crotch, and started to talk.

“I’m cleaning out my old life. If you only knew how good that felt. I was no one before. I was half a person.”

“You were a little depressed,” Stig said. “That can happen to anyone.”

“I held my tongue all these years but now I’m talking. I know many people don’t like it. You should see how the neighbor watches me. When I carried the books out in the garden he stood there staring at me through the hedge.”

“He must have been curious.”

“He hates me. I think he’s started a campaign in order to get rid of me.”

“It’s too bad about all the books,” Stig said, and felt desire stir again. “You’ve been a little confused since your father disappeared,” he continued and put his hand on her head.

“Maybe he’s not my father,” Laura said.

“What do you mean?”

She turned her head.

“Stay,” she said.

“We can’t keep going like this,” he said and pressed her head to his crotch.

Jessica was waiting for him. He was sure she was sitting at their shared desk. He could see her clearly in his mind, illuminated by the globe-shaped lamp, how she put the last touch on the offer to the Germans, fine-tuning the wording and examining the numbers to the last little decimal.

He should also be there. More and more it felt as if the future of the firm stood and fell with the results of the negotiations with Hausmann.

Laura licked one side of his groin.

“I love you,” she whispered.

He stared straight ahead. On the wall across from him there was a photograph of Laura and Ulrik Hindersten. He saw no details but sensed it had been taken in Italy. Laura was around twenty. Ulrik had his arm around her shoulders and smiled for the camera.

Next to it there was a framed picture of a little red cottage. It was the type of aerial photo sold in the forties and that no cottager, farmer, or householder could resist. The colors had faded of course, but it made even the humblest little cottage look grand. There was no indication of how extensive the grounds were. All sense of meagerness was gone.

Desire slowly drained away from Stig Franklin and he very gently detached himself from Laura. Her nails bored into his buttocks and he suddenly became afraid, as if he had missed his chance, passed up something of value, while he was making love to Laura, whose nails now scratched his buttocks and thighs.

“What are you doing?” he yelped and freed himself.

He pushed the curtain to the side and let in a little light in order to be able to hastily collect his clothes. Laura’s pale face was blank, as if she didn’t really understand what was happening.

Stig pulled on his pants and fumblingly buttoned his shirt but stopped when he caught her gaze.

“What is it?”

She didn’t answer, simply pulling the covers around her.

“I have to go, don’t you understand? We’ll have to talk more later.”

“We haven’t talked at all,” Laura moaned and Stig glanced at her quickly, tucking his shirt into his pants.

He fastened his cuff links and pulled his tie around his neck. Laura swiftly stood up, grabbed him by the tie, and pulled. Stig fell headlong onto the bed and Laura threw herself over him, still with a firm grip on the tie. The weight of her body across his chest and the noose that was being pulled increasingly tighter locked Stig to the bed. Laura neutralized his waving arms by scooting forward and pressing her knees across the tops of his arms.

She didn’t say anything, released the pressure around his neck after a few moments, and pushed her crotch up toward his panting mouth.

“You’re afraid,” she whispered, “afraid of that witch.”

“Laura,” he croaked, “I can’t breathe.”

“Yes, you can.”

He choked back a sob.

“You like making love to me, don’t you?” she whispered.

He nodded eagerly.

“We have so much to catch up on,” she continued.

Stig made an attempt to get away, braced his feet and pushed back while at the same time he turned his head to escape the noose around his neck.

“We have so much to talk about,” he said and managed to free one arm.

Her forehead was burning as if she had a fever. He stroked her face softly and was overcome with a feeling of intimacy. Her heat radiated toward him, her damp and tensed body gave the impression of a hunted animal whose shiny skin did not offer any protection.

Laura let him caress her. She calmed down somewhat, her breathing slowed. Her anxious eyes closed briefly and she sighed heavily.

He stroked her face and throat, put his arm around her neck and drew her close and whispered words he had never said to Jessica. Rationally Stig knew this was madness and everything he said doomed his marriage to annihilation.

The scratches, the smell of her genitals on his shirt, the marks around his neck, and the fact that he came home so late spoke for him. Jessica would not believe a single word of his invented explanations, that only a few minutes ago had seemed so reasonable. There was simply nothing to say.

Did he love Jessica? He thought so, or wanted to believe it. His life was the firm and Jessica. When he thought about his life, she and the future of the company were the same thing.

“I wish I could step ashore,” Laura said softly.

There was no desperation left in her voice.

“And where are you now?”

“On a stormy sea.”

It was a good image. Stig had no trouble imagining Laura surrounded by a screaming sea with waves that crashed threateningly onto the deck and tugged on everything living.

“I always dream about a little harbor with a restaurant, you know, one of those charming little harbor pubs, where I can settle down.”

“Then you should go there,” he whispered.

Laura kissed his throat and pressed herself against him. He held her and felt great tenderness when he touched her frail back with ribs running down like a grate and the thin pillar of vertabrae he slowly traced with his finger all the way down to her buttocks.

“I’ll stay for a while,” he whispered. “So we can talk a little.”

When they shortly thereafter sat on each side of the kitchen table, Laura with a cup of tea and Stig with a beer he had opened but not drunk, it was as if the intimacy from the bedroom and the feeling of shared vulnerability had been replaced by distance and silence. Stig tried to imagine them making love again but shielded himself. He looked at her. She looked naked, even though she had draped a robe around her.

He thought Laura looked as if she was constructed out of the most delicate glass and the fear that she was about to shatter made him hold back his words. He was not the protective harbor she was looking for. Not now, and most likely never. He intercepted himself weighing the possibility. Jessica would perhaps forgive a transgression, but he would have to break all contact with Laura. That would be the wisest course of action but at the same time he was tempted by the closeness they had felt for a brief moment.

Laura smiled suddenly and said something in Italian. Stig took a sip of beer.

She was something outside the norm, definitely something other than Jessica. He knew that a relationship between him and Laura was an impossibility, almost a laughable abnormality, but still he chose to stay in her presence.

She had lived with her father in this house for thirty-five years, now he was gone and she could breathe easily. Stig knew enough about Ulrik Hindersten to know that she must many times have been living in a hell. Laura seldom complained but there had always been an imprisoned animal’s sorrowful and desperately wild look to her eyes. Now her father was gone, probably forever, but how free was she?

He caught himself staring at her throat and the breasts that peeked out from inside the robe. Laura smiled again and her beauty was like pain. She put down the teacup and laid her arms on the table. The open hands formed a bowl, a gesture that Stig had once seen a holy man do in a little village in the vicinity of Angkor Vat. That was before Jessica, before everything. The emaciated prophet rested with folded legs and by his side there was a little rice on a banana leaf. His loincloth was dirty, the legs extremely thin, and the stomach appeared glued to his spine.

Stig reached for the beer bottle and drained the rest of it, contemplating the bottle’s elongated shape. He visualized Jessica’s face against the dirty-yellow wall paneling. Her hair pulled back, the mouth open.

The desire to stay with Laura disappeared and left a bitter taste of grief paired with relief. It was as if he was saying good-bye to part of himself. He wiped some drops of beer from his chin. He tried to smile, but the more he managed the more the smile left Laura’s lips.

Stig Franklin left the house in Kåbo at eight thirty. He ended up standing next to the car for a moment. He wished he would have been able to take off his clothes and be rinsed clean. The rain had increased during the evening. Now it was pouring down, whipping against the roof of the car and a small river was running burbling down into a drain.

He had an impulse to throw his car keys down the drain as well, leave the car, and simply walk, go as far away as possible. He turned his head and looked back at the house he had left. He could only see parts of the roof. Not so much as the light from the windows penetrated the bushes and trees.

But the neighbor’s house was lit up. Small lamps, placed in two orderly rows from the street up toward the entrance, spread a dim light over the garden. Stig saw the shadow of a person flicker by in one of the windows. It was the odious professor that Laura had talked about. Stig had an idea of who he was. He thought they had bumped into each other once during a lunch at the Gillet.

Without a doubt the neighbor had noted the presence of the car in the street and perhaps even recognized him. It was not possible to be anonymous. To be a Rotary member and keep a mistress in Kåbo was a losing proposition.

He couldn’t possibly return to Jessica in this condition. There would be trouble, he knew that, and not just that. He would in all likelihood be thrown out for good. It was Jessica’s house, paid for by her former company, perhaps even by Torbjörnsson junior himself. Rumors had circulated but Stig had never paid any attention to them, nor asked Jessica how she could afford a house in Sunnersta, but more than once he had been made to feel that he lived there on her charity. He had offered to pay for half of the house, had even been to the bank and arranged the loan, but Jessica had curtly turned down his offer.

She wasn’t one to let something slide. He would have to pack his things and leave. Stig Franklin shivered and sat down in the car.

The clothes that were soaked through reminded him of a canoe trip in Ströms Vattudal many years ago, when he had flipped the canoe and been convinced he was going to drown. That time he had managed to crawl up on a stony beach but his provisions and canoe were lost. Shaking with cold he heard the wind pick up and how the waves rose up out of the black water. He had the feeling that they were disappointed, furious that he had escaped them.

An old man, who lived very close to the shore, came walking along and led Stig to his cottage. They shared a bottle of grayish liquor in front of the fire and the old man entertained Stig with fantastic stories about log-driving, death by drowning, and the devilishness of the sea.

The man’s love-hate relationship to the water seemed grounded in an ancient conviction that man lived off water but also under its curse.

“It is the same thing with fire,” the old man went on to philosophize and spit into the fire. “It warms us, but devours us also. Like love.”

Stig put his key in the ignition and at that moment Laura Hinder-sten’s car rolled out onto the street. He saw it vanish around the corner before he realized completely that it was her. He backed up a few meters and saw that her car was no longer parked in the driveway.

Where was she going? She hadn’t said anything about going anywhere. Stig followed her and saw her rear lights turn the corner at Artillerigatan. At Dag Hammarskjöld’s Way she turned right. Stig got a red light and was forced to stop but now he had an idea of where she was headed.

He checked the traffic in the intersection. Everything was calm, there was only one car in sight and it was driving down the hill to the hospital. Stig drove on red and took up the chase.

Stig watched Laura park about twenty meters from his home, a “funkis” house at the end of a cul-de-sac. He braked and drove down the street very slowly He was at a loss. Should he drive up, park the car, and go in, pretending he hadn’t seen her car? The risk was great that she would make her presence known, perhaps call out to him, want him to stop and talk.

If he, on the other hand, parked on the street, chances were good that the neighbors would see his car and start to wonder what it was doing there. Even if he crouched over the Dahlströms would catch him, he was convinced of that.

He stopped but let the motor run. Laura’s car was partly concealed behind a hedge but he could see her sitting inside.

The lights were on in the bottom story of his house. Stig could picture Jessica, how she sat in the study and went through the Hausmann document, with concentration but upset, always glancing at the clock in the right-hand corner of the computer screen. Many times he had admired her ability to set aside all worry and soldier on, effective and focused.

If Laura left her car and approached the house what should he do? Try to stop her? How could he do that without attracting attention on the street? She would most likely start to argue in a loud voice. Run her over? That would wake up the whole street.

Stig visualized Laura’s pale body, crushed against the black asphalt. He sneezed once, twice. How would he explain it? That she ran out in front of his car and he hadn’t had a chance to veer away? In Laura’s current condition no one would consider that implausible.

Harder to explain the scratches to Jessica. She would be able to accept that he ran over a confused Laura, but she would never accept infidelity from him.

It started to rain harder. The Nilssons turned out the light downstairs. Gustav Rosén let out the cat. Poor devil, Stig thought, as he pushed the car into first gear and quickly drove up to the driveway, opened the garage door with the remote control, drove in, jumped out of the car, and pulled the door down. All done in the span of a few seconds.

He took out a knife from the toolbox on the workbench, tested its edge on his finger, and then cut the back of his trousers with four quick slices of the knife. There was a sting of pain as the knife went through the fabric and cut his skin, and he yelped. Before he threw the knife back he jabbed his right hand, then opened the door to the driveway, closed it as quickly behind him, and walked into the house.

“That fucking cat,” he yelled as he shut the door to the laundry room and walked into the kitchen.

“What is it?” Jessica shouted from the study.

“Rosén’s damn cat attacked me.”

He poured water on his hand. Jessica came out into the kitchen and stared at him.

“The cat?” she said unusually stupidly.

“Yes, Rosén’s damn tiger. He was sitting in the garage and when I got out of the car he attacked me.”

“What was he doing in the garage?”

“How the hell would I know? It must have snuck in.”

“Is it still there?”

“No, I kicked it out.”

“You pants are ruined.”

“I’ll make that damn tree-hugger pay for it. And the cat should be shot!”

“Calm down. You must have scared it.”

“Are you working?” Stig asked.

“Yes. Where have you been?”

“At Laura’s. She called. She’s dissatisfied with Hausmann. I think she’s going a little nuts.”

“She’s been that for a long time. But why didn’t you call?”

“It just didn’t happen. I’m sorry, but she threatened to call Weber and tell him, well, you know, everything…”

“Call Weber!”

Stig was rejoicing inside. He had succeeded in diverting Jessica’s attention and now he stoked the fire. The relief made him improve even further on his story, how he had stood in the rain at Laura’s, anxious to get away, but how she had more or less attached herself to him, even pulling him by the tie, and kept arguing with him.

“She said something about there being sixty thousand euros reserved for extraordinary costs for phase B. Is that correct? It seems ridiculous.”

“No, no, it’s only half that,” Jessica said.

“Can you check it?”

“I know it’s thirty thousand.”

“But could you check it, please? It’s thrown me for a loop. She may even have gone in and changed it.”

Jessica walked back to the study and Stig followed, pausing in front of the hall mirror to check if the marks around his neck were visible. He was red there but that sometimes happened when his shirts were too tight.

“It’s thirty thousand!” Jessica shouted.

“Wonderful,” Stig said with emphasis. “I’ll jump in the shower and then we have to talk about what we’re going to do about Miss Hindersten.”

Laura saw Jessica get up from the computer when Stig went into the kitchen. She couldn’t understand why he had arrived so much later than she had. Had he driven by the office?

Laura imagined them talking, how Stig told her everything, that he loved Laura and that his and Jessica’s relationship had no future.

After several minutes Jessica returned to the computer. She looked calm. Her hair shone in the light of the desk lamp. Stig was nowhere to be seen.

Laura stepped out of the car.

She realized there had been no confrontation. He was too cowardly, afraid of that witch. Laura had been too, before, but all fear had disappeared when she realized how life should be lived. It was as if a voice had spoken to her: It’s time to settle accounts with your old life, Laura!

She remembered how strong this voice had been and reminded herself that it was necessary because of how many difficulties she had had to overcome. Shattered, she sat at the kitchen table asking herself how she was going to carry on while the radio reported the results of the referendum on the European Monetary Union. Then, somewhere beyond the fear that twisted her innards, there came the sound of victorious music and a voice that rattled off confident proclamations: No room for doubt! Strike back!

Sometimes this voice was interrupted by a collage of Italian voices but it always returned even stronger, filtering out the static in her head. She laughed with relief, pushed away the knife, whose edge she had tested on some fruit, and walked out into the library, finally clear on how the whole thing was going to be done.

Laura walked closer to the house, bent some branches down, and stared at her rival. She had an impulse to step into the square of light thrown onto the dark lawn by the light through the window, which would illuminate her like a spotlight on an otherwise dark stage.

She stared at the hateful woman who seemed so self-sufficient in her blond beauty and her purposeful, measured movements in front of the computer.

Only one thing held Laura back. It was not yet time to strike back. It was something Ulrik had taught her, strangely enough: patience.