The Nightmare

41

It’s been ten months since Axel Riessen met Beverly Andersson, and that only came about because of his acute insomnia. Ever since he experienced a traumatic event thirty years ago, he’s had difficulty sleeping. As long as he took sleeping pills, he was able to manage, but he slept a chemical sleep without dreams and without real rest. At least he slept.

Eventually he had to keep increasing the dosage. The pills caused a hypnotic noise that drowned out his thoughts, but he loved his medication and he usually mixed it with expensive, well-aged whiskey. One day, after twenty years of high consumption, Axel’s brother found him unconscious in the hallway, blood flowing from both nostrils.

At Karolinska Hospital, he was diagnosed with severe cirrhosis of the liver. The chronic cell damage was so serious that, after the usual medical tests, he was placed on the waiting list for a liver transplant. He was in blood group O and his tissue type was unusual, so the number of possible donors was fairly slim.

His younger brother could have donated a partial liver if he hadn’t suffered from such severe arrhythmia that his heart could not have endured an operation.

The hope of finding a liver donor was nearly nonexistent, but if Axel refrained from drinking and using sleeping pills, he would not die. As long as he took regular doses of Konakion, Inderal, and Spironolakton, his liver functioned and he lived a normal life.

Except that he never slept more than an hour or two at night. He was admitted to a sleep clinic in Gothenburg and underwent a polysomnography and had his insomnia officially diagnosed. Since medication was out of the question, he was given advice about meditation, hypnosis, self-suggestion, and sleep techniques. None of this helped.

Four months after his liver collapsed, he was awake for nine days straight and had a psychotic episode.

He had himself voluntarily admitted to the private psychiatric hospital Saint Maria Hjärta.

There he met Beverly. She was just fourteen years old.

As usual, Axel had been lying awake and it was about three in the morning. It was totally dark outside. She just opened his door. She was like an unhappy spirit who walked all night through the hallways of the psychiatric hospital. Perhaps all she was looking for was a person she could be with.

He was in bed, sleepless and disconsolate, when the girl came into his room and stood in front of him without a word. Her long nightgown brushed against the floor.

“I saw there was light in this room,” she whispered. “You’re giving off light.”

Then she crawled into his bed. He was still sick from lack of sleep and he didn’t know what he was doing. He grabbed her tiny body hard, too hard, and pressed her to him.

She said nothing. She just lay there.

He buried his face in the back of her neck. Then he fell asleep.

It was as though he had plunged deep into the waters of sleep and found dreams. He slept only a few minutes that first time. Every night after that, she came to his room. He would hold her tightly and then, covered with sweat, he’d fall asleep.

His psychological instability slowly dissipated like condensation from a mirror. Beverly stopped wandering through the hospital hallways all night.

Axel Riessen and Beverly Andersson left Saint Maria Hjärta Hospital with a silent and desperate agreement. Both of them understood that this close-knit arrangement had to be a secret. As far as the outside world could see, Beverly Andersson was temporarily housed in one of the apartments in Axel Riessen’s mansion until a student apartment opened up.

Beverly Andersson is now fifteen and had been diagnosed with a borderline personality disorder. She has no sense of boundaries between herself and other people. She also has no self-defense mechanism.

In past eras, girls like Beverly might be locked up in mental institutions permanently or they might be forced to undergo sterilization or a lobotomy to control their lack of morals and unrestrained sexuality.

Girls like Beverly often still follow the wrong people home and trust people who are not worth their trust.

Beverly is lucky she found me, Axel Riessen would reassure himself. I am not a pedophile, do not want to harm her or make money off her. I just need her next to me so I can sleep. Without sleep, I’ll be destroyed.

She often talks about their getting married once she’s old enough.

Axel Riessen lets her spin her fantasies of marriage because it makes her happy and calm. He convinces himself that he’s protecting her from the outside world, but he also knows that he’s using her. He’s ashamed, but can’t figure out any other alternative. He’s afraid of returning to relentless insomnia.

Beverly walks out of the bathroom with a toothbrush in her mouth. She nods toward the three violins hanging on the wall.

“Why don’t you ever play them?” she asks.

“I can’t,” he replies with a smile.

“Are they just going to hang there? Why don’t you give them to someone who can play them?”

“I like these violins. Robert gave them to me.”

“You hardly speak about your brother.”

“We have a complicated relationship.”

“I know he makes violins in his workshop,” she says.

“Yes, that’s what he does… he also plays in a chamber orchestra.”

“Maybe he can play for us at our wedding?” she asks as she wipes toothpaste from the corner of her mouth.

Axel looks at her and hopes that she doesn’t pick up on the mechanical way he answers as he says, “What a good idea.”

He feels exhaustion flowing over him like a wave, over his body and his brain. He walks past her and into the bedroom and sinks down on the edge of the bed.

“I’m very sleepy. I…”

“I feel very sorry for you,” she says in total seriousness.

Axel shakes his head.

“I just need to sleep,” he says. All at once, he feels as if he’ll burst into tears.

He stands up again and picks out a nightgown in pink cotton.

“Please, Beverly, why don’t you wear this one?”

“Sure, if you want me to.”

She pauses to look at a large oil painting by Ernst Billgren. A fox is wearing clothes and sitting in an armchair in some upper-middle-class home.

“I hate that picture,” she says.

“You do?”

She nods and starts to undress.

“Can’t you change in the bathroom?” he asks.

She shrugs and as she pulls off her pink top, Axel moves away so that he won’t see her nude. He walks over to the painting of the fox, looks at it, then takes it down to set it, facedown, on the floor.

Axel’s sleep is stiff and heavy, his jaw clenched. He’s held the girl very tightly. Suddenly he startles awake and lets her go. He sucks in air like a drowning man. He’s sweating and his heart is pounding from fear. He turns on the lamp on the nightstand. Beverly sleeps as relaxed as a child, mouth open and a little sheen on her forehead. Axel starts to think about Carl Palmcrona again. The last time they’d met, they mingled with the nobility at a meeting in Riddarhuset. Palmcrona had been drunk and aggressive. He’d gone on and on about the UN weapon embargoes and finished his tirade with those strange words: If everything goes to hell, I’ll pull an Algernon so I won’t reap my nightmare.

Axel turns off the lamp and lies down again while he tries to understand what Palmcrona meant by saying “pull an Algernon.” What was he talking about? What kind of nightmare was he thinking about? And did he really say that strange I won’t reap my nightmare?

What had happened to Carl-Fredrik Algernon? It was a mystery in Sweden. Up until his death, Algernon had been the military-equipment inspector for the Foreign Office. One January day he’d had a meeting with the CEO of Nobel Industries, Anders Carlberg. He’d told Carlberg that their investigation had turned up information that one of the members of the conglomerate had smuggled weapons to countries in the Persian Gulf. Later that same day, Carl-Fredrik Algernon had fallen in front of a subway train in Central Station in Stockholm.

Axel’s thoughts slip away and become increasingly blurred, circulating around accusations of arms smuggling and bribery concerning the Bofors Corporation. He sees a man in a trench coat falling backward in front of an oncoming train.

The man falls slowly, his coattails flapping.

Beverly’s soft breathing catches him up, calms him, and he turns toward her to wrap his arms around her again.

She sighs as he pulls her closer to him.

Sleep comes to him in the softness of a cloud. His thoughts fade away.

For the rest of the night, he still sleeps restlessly and wakes again at five in the morning. He’s been holding on so tightly to Beverly, his arms are cramped. Her stubbly hair tickles his lips. He wishes desperately that he could take his sleeping pills instead.