The Nightmare

53

Axel opens the door and greets the bike messenger. The warm evening air sweeps into the house along with the pounding music from the end-of-the-year party at the School of Architecture.

Axel takes the folder and yet feels awkward about signing the contract in front of the messenger. He feels he would look like he’s caving in under a bit of pressure.

“Just a minute,” he says and gestures for the messenger to wait in the hallway.

Axel walks through his side of the house, through the library, and into the kitchen, past its granite counters, the glossy black cabinets, and up to the double-door refrigerator with its ice machine. He takes out a mini-bottle of mineral water and drinks straight from it as he loosens his tie. He sits on a high stool next to the bar counter and opens the folder.

Everything is neat, tidy, and appears to be in order. Every appendix is in its proper place: the opinion of the Export Control Committee, the classification, the preliminary decision, the copies for the Foreign Office, and the tender notice. He scans the document concerning export permission and flips to the line where the general director for the National Inspectorate of Strategic Products is supposed to sign his name.

A chill shivers through his body.

This is really big business. It appears to be a routine matter only delayed by the tragic suicide of Carl Palmcrona, but it is clear that it seriously affects his country’s trade balance. He understands that Pontus Salman’s situation is so precarious that this delay might drive his company under if drawn out much longer.

But while he understands this, Axel also understands that he is being pressured to approve export of ammunition to Kenya without being given the opportunity to personally weigh the decision.

Axel makes a decision and immediately feels much better.

He’ll devote his attention to this matter over the next few days-and only then will he sign the approval.

He will sign, he’s pretty sure of that, but he can’t sign now. He doesn’t care if they get angry or upset. He is the person who must make the decision: he is now the general director for the National Inspectorate of Strategic Products.

He doodles a smiley face and draws a one-word dialogue bubble on the signature line.

Axel returns to the hall wearing a stern expression and hands the folder back to the messenger. Then he goes upstairs and into the salon. He’s wondering if Beverly is really upstairs or if she didn’t dare tell him that she had sneaked out.

What if she sneaks out and then disappears?

Axel picks up a remote for his music system and selects a mix of David Bowie’s earliest work. His music system looks like a shiny sheet of glass. It’s wireless and the speakers are completely invisible and set into the walls.

He goes to the elaborate liquor cabinet, opens its embossed doors, and considers the gleaming bottles. He hesitates before he picks up a numbered whiskey bottle of Hazelburn from the Springbank Distillery, one located in Scotland’s Campbeltown region. Axel once visited the area and had marveled at the hundred-year-old barrels. They were well worn, painted in clear red, and still in use. He pulls out the cork and breathes in the scent of the whiskey: deep earth and dark like a thunderstorm. Then he pushes in the cork again and slowly returns the bottle to the cabinet. The music system is playing a song from Hunky Dory. David Bowie sings:

But her friend is nowhere to be seen.

Now she walks through her sunken dream,

To the seat with the clearest view,

And she’s hooked to the silver screen.

The door to his brother’s apartment slams shut. Axel looks out through the enormous panorama windows with their view of the overgrown garden. He wonders if Robert is going to stop by and at the same moment, he hears the knock on his door.

“Come in,” Axel calls out.

Robert marches in looking disturbed.

“I realize that you play that crap in order to drive me crazy, but-”

Axel smiles and starts to sing along:

Take a look at the Lawman,

Beating up the wrong guy.

Oh man! Wonder if he’ll ever know:

He’s in the bestselling show…

Robert does a few dance steps and walks over to the open liquor cabinet. He takes a look at the bottles.

“Go ahead and help yourself,” Axel says drily.

“Could you take a look at my Strosser-can I turn off the music for a moment?”

Axel shrugs. Robert hits STOP.

“The Strosser is finished?”

“I was up all night,” Robert says with a broad smile. “I attached the strings early this morning.”

There’s a moment of silence between them. A long time ago, their mother had been adamant that Axel would be a famous violinist. Alice Riessen had been a professional musician and played for ten years as second violin in the Stockholm Opera’s chamber music orchestra. She’d openly favored her firstborn son.

Everything fell apart when Axel, at the Royal College of Music, had become one of the three finalists in the Johan Fredrik Berwald Competition for young soloists. It would have been a straight shot from there into the world’s elite.

But after the competition, Axel had entered the Military Academy in Karlberg. Robert had enrolled in the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. He never became a star violinist. On the other hand, he plays in a chamber orchestra and now owns a renowned atelier where he takes orders for stringed instruments from around the world.

“Show me your violin,” Axel says after a while.

Robert nods and goes to get the instrument. It’s a beautiful violin with a fiery-red lacquer and a bottom of tiger-striped maple.

He stands before his brother and begins to play a trembling strain from a Béla Bartók piece inspired by a journey through the Hungarian countryside. Axel has always liked Bartók, who as an open opponent of Nazism was forced to flee his native land. Axel admires Bartók’s ability to be deeply thoughtful yet able to create short bursts of pure joy. Or to write melancholy folk music amid the ruins of a great catastrophe, Axel thinks as Robert finishes the piece.

“It sounds very good,” Axel says. “But you should move the sound post slightly as there’s a dead spot that-”

Robert’s face shuts down.

“Daniel Strosser said that he wanted… a sound like this,” Robert says. “He wants the violin to sound like a young Birgit Nilsson.”

“Then you should absolutely move the sound post,” Axel says with a smile.

“You don’t understand! I just wanted you to-”

“Otherwise it’s an excellent instrument,” Axel hurries to add.

“You hear the sound-dry and sharp and-”

“I’m not saying it’s a bad violin,” Axel continues impassively. “I’m only saying that there’s a spot in the sound that is not alive-”

“Alive? This is a Bartók performer buying this violin,” Robert says. “We’re talking about Bartók, and that’s not the same thing as David Bowie.”

“Maybe I heard wrong,” Axel responds quietly.

Robert opens his mouth to answer when there’s a knock on the door. It’s Robert’s wife, Anette.

She opens the door and smiles when she sees Robert holding his violin.

“So you were trying out the Strosser?” she asks expectantly.

“Yes,” Robert says harshly. “But Axel doesn’t like it.”

“That’s not true,” Axel says. “I’m sure his customer will be perfectly satisfied. What I was saying might just be a figment of my imagination-”

“Oh, Robert, don’t listen to him,” Anette says with irritation. “What does he know?”

Robert now just wants to leave and take his wife with him to avoid a scene, but she turns to Axel.

“Confess that you just imagined a fault,” she demands.

“There is no fault in it. Just an adjustment of the sound post that-”

“And when was the last time you played? Thirty years ago? Forty? You were nothing more than a child then. You owe Robert an apology.”

“Let it go,” Robert says.

“Say you’re sorry,” Anette demands.

“All right. I’m sorry,” Axel says. He feels his cheeks flush.

“You don’t want Robert to have the fame his new violin deserves.”

“I’m sorry.”

Axel turns his stereo back on very loud. Ziggy Stardust drops into rotation. The music sounds like two guitars that haven’t been tuned properly and a singer who is searching for the right note: Goodbye love, goodbye love…

Anette mutters something more about Axel’s lack of talent, but Robert tells her to just shut up as he pulls her out of the room. Axel raises the volume even higher and the drums and bass guitar turn the music around: Didn’t know what time it was and the lights were low oh oh. I leaned back on my radio oh oh.

Axel shuts his eyes and feels how they burn in the dark. He is already very tired. There are times when he can sleep for half an hour and at other times he can’t sleep at all, even when Beverly is in bed next to him. At those times, he wraps himself in a blanket and goes to sit on the glassed-in veranda with its view of the beautiful old trees in the garden. He will sit there until the dampened light of dawn appears. Of course, Axel understands completely what is wrong with him, and he closes his eyes and thinks back again to the day when his whole life changed.