The Demon of Dakar aka The Demon from Dakar

Four

“Imagine being able to sail.”

Eva Willman smiled to herself. The newspaper article about the holiday paradise in the West Indies was accompanied by a photograph of a yacht. It was at half sail and waves were breaking against the bow. A pennant fluttered at the top of the mast. There was a man dressed in blue shorts, a white tank top, and a blue cap standing in the stern. He looked relaxed, especially for someone with the responsibility for such a big boat. Eva sensed that he was the one who was steering. His gaze was directed up at the billowing sails. She thought she could see a smile on his face.

“I wouldn’t even be able to afford the cap,” she went on and pointed.

Helen leaned over and looked quickly at the page before she sank back into the sofa and continued to file her nails.

“I get sea sick,” she said.

“But just think what freedom,” Eva said and read on.

The article was about the island cluster of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao.

They were described as paradise islands, an el Dorado for snorklers and divers. A place where you could leave your troubles behind.

“The Antilles,” she muttered. “Think of how many places there are.”

“Sailing isn’t my thing,” Helen said.

For a while Eva studied the map of the string of islands north of Venezuela. She followed the coastline and read the foreign place names. The rasping sound of the nail file was getting on her nerves.

“I would like to see the fish, those tropical kinds in all the colors of the rainbow.”

She glanced at the digital clock on the VCR before she continued to browse.

“Maybe I should enroll in a class,” she said suddenly. “Learn to sail, I mean. It’s probably not that hard.”

“Do you know anyone with a sailboat?”

“No,” Eva said, “but you can always get to know someone.”

She stared unseeing at the next story. It was about a school in southern Sweden that had burned down.

“Maybe I’ll meet some hottie with a boat. It has to be a sailboat, not anything with an engine.”

“And who would that be?”

“A nice, handsome guy. A good man.”

“One who would want a middle-aged bag with two kids? Dream on.”

The words struck Eva with unexpected force.

“Well, what about you?” she said aggressively.

The nail file stopped in the air. Eva kept flipping through the magazine. She felt Helen’s gaze. She knew exactly how her friend looked: one corner of her mouth turned down, a vertical wrinkle in her forehead, and the birthmark between her eyebrows like the period in an exclamation point.

Helen was adept at looking displeased, as if someone was always trying to put one over on her. Which was true. Her man was constantly unfaithful to her.

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing in particular,” Eva said, and shot a quick look at her friend.

“What the hell has gotten into you today? I can’t help the fact that you feel dumped.”

“I haven’t been dumped! I’ve been laid off after eleven long fucking years.”

Eva pushed the magazine away and got to her feet. It wasn’t the first time that Helen was using the word dumped. Eva hated it. She was thirty-four years old and far from washed up.

“I’m going to get myself a new job,” she said.

“Good luck,” Helen said, and resumed her filing.

Eva left the living room and walked out into the kitchen, hastily shuffling together the papers from the unemployment agency and pushing them in among the cookbooks in the kitchen. Patrik would be home soon.

The rhythmic filing could be heard all the way out in the kitchen. Eva ended up standing in front of the cabinet where the box of O’boy was. The most routine duties became important, every movement, such as taking out milk and chocolate powder, became significant. She stretched out her hand. The white line on her wrist where her watch had been was a reminder of the passage of time. She moved guardedly as if she were a stranger in her own kitchen, while the seconds, minutes, and hours marched on relentlessly. Her hand was warm but the cabinet handle cool. Her arm was tanned and covered in tiny liver spots that had grown more numerous over the past few years.

Eva opened the cabinet. The filing had stopped and the only thing she could hear was the rustle of Helen turning the pages of a magazine.

There was sugar, flour, oats, popcorn, coffee, and other dry goods on the shelves. She sized up each package as if it were the first time she was looking at it.

Her paralysis was only broken when Patrik suddenly opened the front door. Eva quickly took out the powdered chocolate mix, then opened the refrigerator door and took out some milk. Barely two liters left. The cucumber was almost gone, the cheese an ancient monument, the eggs, okay, and enough yogurt, she summed up.

“Hello!” she yelled, surprised at how happy she sounded, but only the sound of his feet on the hallway floor made her smile.

Behind his shuffling movements and somewhat grumpy demeanor there was a capacity for observation that never ceased to amaze her. He was becoming wiser and more mature. When she pointed this out he became dismissive, and when she praised him he appeared completely bewildered, as if he did not want to admit to having been thoughtful or kind.

He walked into the kitchen and sat down. Eva set the table in silence.

“Who is here?”

“Helen. She wanted to borrow the iron.”

“Doesn’t she own one?”

“It’s broken.”

Patrik sighed and poured out some milk. Eva watched him. His pants were starting to get worn. When he claimed that they were supposed to look like that, she laughed heartily. When worn clothes became trendy, the poor man had the advantage for once.

“I have a job for you,” Patrik said suddenly.

He was making his fourth sandwich.

“What?”

Patrik looked at her and Eva thought she saw concern in his eyes.

“Simon’s mom was talking about it. Her brother is moving to Uppsala, for a new job.”

He took a sip of the O’boy chocolate milk.

“What does that have to do with me?”

“They need a waitriss. He’s a chef.”

“Waitress, not waitriss.”

“But chef is right.”

“I’m going to work as a waitress? What else did she say? Did she talk about me?”

A new sigh from Patrik.

“What did she say?”

“You’ll have to talk to her yourself.”

He stood up with a sandwich in his hand.

“I’m going to the movies tonight.”

“Do you have money?”

He shuffled off to his room without answering, and closed the door behind him. Eva looked at the clock on the wall. Simon’s mother, she thought, and started to clear the table, but stopped. Hugo would be home from school soon.

Helen came into the kitchen and sat down at the table.

“Where’s Patrik?”

Eva didn’t bother to answer. Helen knew very well where he was. Fury boiled up in Eva at the sight of her friend.

“You think I put you down, yes, I know it,” Helen said, with unexpected loudness. “You dream of sailboats and nice, wonderful men, but have you thought of something?”

Eva stared at her.

“That you never do anything about it. Get it? It’s only talk.”

“I’ve got a job,” Eva said.

“What?”

“Waitress.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know,” Eva said.

Helen looked at her and Eva thought she saw the flicker of a smile on her lips.

When Helen had left, Eva poured out the last of the coffee and sank down on a chair. Not to be taken seriously, she thought, that was the worst. Or rather, that others didn’t have any faith in one’s abilities. Helen had tried to hide her taunting smile, she knew her friendship with Eva could not withstand everything, but the split-second insight that in the future, her friend would spitefully remind her about the waitress job made Eva rage inside. Helen would probably ask about it in passing, about how did that turn out, because… yes, what? Only in order to feel superior? To take her frustrations out on Eva when she ought to put her own life in order? Helen had not worked since she stopped running her home day care several years ago.

She drank some of the coffee. She could hear music from Patrik’s room. Eva wished that he had stayed in the kitchen and told her a little more about what Simon’s mother had said. But she sensed there was probably not much more.

Am I worthless? This question came to Eva Willman as she was pulling out a new trash can liner from under the sink. At the bottom of the plastic container there was a decomposing banana peel and a sticky, foul-smelling mass, in whose brown gooey center new life appeared to be flourishing. She took out the new liner, at the same time pulling out the trash can and placing it on the counter. Then she ended up sitting in a crouch, staring into the hole under the sink that the drain pipes disappeared into.

She was about to call out to Patrik, have him come out into the kitchen and show him how disgusting everything became if one did not take care of something as basic as the trash, but why should she bother? She came off as enough of a nag already.

How many times a week did she take out the garbage? How many times did she reach in under the sink, press down the contents, pull up the bag, and tie it?

The sharp smell penetrated her nostrils. This is my smell, she thought, and this is my terrain, drain pipes and a collection of packets of hygiene products and brushes. She reached for the sponge that was tucked in between the pipes and had the urge to bite into it, chew it into green-yellow pieces and savor the taste of cleaning and dishwashing and chores that were threatening to overwhelm her.

There was a splashing sound from inside the pipes. That was probably the upstairs neighbor, a newly arrived Bosnian woman doing the dishes. The sound reminded Eva that she was not alone in the building.

She visualized the apartments as boxes arranged one on top of the other. Five entrances, four stories, and three apartments on each level. Sixty apartments. She knew the names of ten or so renters, nodded in recognition to some fifty people, and did not associate with any of them.

Her legs ached and she sank down on the floor, leaned against the kitchen cabinets, resting there with her elbows on her knees and gently stroking her forehead with the tips of her fingers. Why was she sitting there, nailed to her own kitchen floor as if an invisible hand was pressing her down?

Sometimes she entertained the idea of getting up, taking Hugo and Patrik and walking around to all sixty apartments, ringing the doorbell and saying… What should she say? Would they even open up, as suspicious as everyone had become since the shooting incident down at the school? No one had been hurt, of course, but the sound of the shots had rung out over the entire area.

The woman one floor up had just stepped off the bus with her two children when it happened. She had recognized the sound of gunfire and had picked up the youngest and held the other by the hand and had run straight into the forest, through wilted grass and brush and into the shielding cover of the trees. She had run into the woods as people have always done in uncertain times and was only discovered under a spruce the next morning by an orienteering team from the UIF sport club who were setting up signs. Luckily, it had been a warm night.

It had been in the papers. They had written about the woman’s background. The building complex had its own celebrity.

Would she open the door if Eva rang the bell? Or Pär, the single man who went by on his bike every morning with a pained expression on his face but who greeted Eva with a smile when they bumped into each other outside. Would he open his door?

Eva had talked to him before. He would often sit on the bench by the little play area and watch his five-year-old son build an endless series of sand castles. Sometimes the son was gone and Eva guessed he was with his mother. Pär was from the north. That was the only thing she knew about him.

The woman above her came from the south. She had mentioned Tuzla, but also a village that Eva could no longer remember the name of.

They had all gathered in a building with fifty-seven other families. Eva imagined them all walking from various directions, leaving behind them lives, relatives, and friends, in order to end up in a rental apartment building on the outskirts of Uppsala.

An area at the outskirts of the city where the cries of the tawny owl could be heard from the forest.

Earlier she had not thought about her surroundings so much. It was only after her divorce from Jörgen that she felt that she had the room to think. While they were still living together, it was as if he took all her time, used up all the oxygen around her, filling the space with his volubility and his thundering laugh. There were those who felt that he was sick, that his incessant talking was a manic fixation on the threat of silence, but Eva knew better. It was an inherited characteristic; his father and grandfather had been the same.

It was possible that he suffered from an overinflated self-confidence. The problem was that he seemed to nourish this self-confidence by turning to his surroundings, preying on Eva like a predatory digger wasp in order to strengthen himself.

Sometimes she pitied him, but only sometimes, and more rarely lately. As they sat in the lawyer’s office discussing the divorce, she felt only fatigue and great scorn. Jörgen was going on as usual, as if he did not understand that they were there to discuss the custody arrangements for the children.

The lawyer interrupted his stream of words by asking if he could really afford to stay in the highly mortgaged condominium. That halted his speech and he gave Eva a terrified look, as if seeking the answer to a question he had never posed. Eva understood that it was not the financial aspect that frightened him, but the sudden realization that he would have to live alone from now on.

Since then, this anxiety did not seem to want to leave him. It did not make him quiet, quite the opposite, but for Eva, Jörgen’s tentative questions about her well-being and tiptoeing into areas that they had not previously touched on were indications that he was not really mature, not conscious of what it meant to share one’s life with another person, that their marriage had simply been an extension of Jörgen’s life with his single mother. She, the bitch, as Eva called her in private, really had only one close friend, and that was her son.

Now the thoughtfulness and questions came too late. Eva was never tempted to grab one of the hooks he tossed out that they should perhaps try again. She maintained her distance and was mostly exaggeratedly formal. She knew that it hurt him, but in an obscure way it gave her a sense of satisfaction. It was a primitive revenge, but she could not be bothered with his sad monologues, where self-pity always lurked behind his account of how difficult life was.

Jörgen came and picked up Patrik and Hugo every other weekend and Eva put up a wall held together with indifference and suspicion toward his incessant drivel, glad to have escaped but careful not to become mean or ironic. He complained that he and the boys did not have a good relationship, but when Eva suggested that the boys should spend longer periods of time with him, he backed off.

Nowadays she had all the time in the world. The only schedule she had to observe were the appointments at the employment agency, and her only duty was to care for her two children, make sure that they got off to school, and went to bed at a somewhat reasonable hour.

Sometimes she was grateful for the fact that she had been laid off. It was as if the process of making herself free had started with her divorce, and that the freedom had now taken a new and higher form. It was a frustrating feeling, this remarkable mixture of anger at not being needed and the joy of being free to do as she pleased.

She formed the impression that it was more expensive to be unemployed. And yet she cut down on everything. She had stopped smoking about a month ago and calculated that she had already saved four hundred kronor. Where had they gone? she asked, but the answer was immediate. Fitting Hugo for instep supports had cost over a thousand kronor.

Her freedom may have increased, with all the hours alone with her thoughts, but her self-esteem was at rock bottom. She felt that she was different, or rather that everyone around her saw with different eyes. She was at the disposal of potential employers. The problem was that no one was disposed to employ her. Could they see it on her, did unemployment leave physical marks? Was there something in her posture that made the girls at the ICA supermarket only a little older than Patrik, or the bus driver when she climbed onto the bus in the middle of the day, regard her as a second-class citizen? She did not want to believe this, but the feeling of being worthless had eaten into her.

And now Helen, who appeared to be growing at Eva’s expense. It was as if she unconsciously saw the possibility of diminishing Eva as a way to take revenge for her own shortcomings and her submission to a man she should have left many years ago.

Eva had shrunk, been pressed back against the kitchen cabinets and the drain pipes under an increasingly shining countertop. Everything in the apartment was cleaned, picked up, dusted, everything was in its place, only that she was no longer needed. Wrong, she thought. I am needed. They had talked about that at work, how important they were, not least for the old people who patiently waited their turn in line, thumbing letters and forms. Someone decided that the post office should be reduced and that the number of customer chairs should be cut. One day there were carpenters there, putting up a wall. That was how it started. And the old people had to stand.

Then came the reduced hours. Everything became crowded, the tone cranky, complaints increased, and the clerks had to deal more often with the customers’ frustrations. One day lists appeared in the waiting area where the customers could sign protests of the worsening service and the closing of more post office locations. Many letters to the editor appeared in Upsala Nya Tidning, but nothing helped, and even Eva’s post office was eventually closed down. That was now nine months ago.

God, how she had looked for jobs! She had spent the first couple of weeks running around to stores, calling the county and the city, getting in touch with friends and even asking Jörgen if he couldn’t get her something at the sanitation company where he worked.

But there was nothing to get. During the summer she had worked for a few weeks in Eldercare Services, and thereafter at a supermarket, filling in for someone on disability, but the employee had miraculously arisen from his sickbed and returned to work.

Thereafter, nothing.