Drowned (16 page)

Linda nods.

“I’ve already sorted it,” she says. “They’re going to be on the bridge and in the pedestrian area, we’ll be putting them out at Easter, they’re going to look fantastic. Have you seen them?”

I shake my head.

“Come with me and I’ll show you.”

Gabriel appears in the hallway as soon as I walk through the door.

“Where have you been?”

“In town.”

I put down the orchid on the bureau in the hall, sit down on the wooden chair next to it, and pull off my boots.

“You’ve been gone for such a long time.”

He both looks and sounds agitated.

“But I told you I was going out.”

“I had no idea when you’d be home. I’m making dinner, it’s Friday, remember.”

His words sound so practiced that I think that’s how he must have sounded when he was talking to Stella, maybe this is a discussion he’s had before, but with her. As if all I have to do is slip into the role. She told me they usually had a special dinner on Friday
night, and that he always did the cooking, she used to say she was lucky to have found a man who could cook.

“Sorry,” I say. “Do you want some help?”

His expression immediately grows softer, almost tender.

“Just some company.”

I follow him into the kitchen, it smells good, I realize I’m hungry. He has lit candles on the table and in the window, and I can hear the crackling of the wood in the tiled stove from the living room. He pours me a glass of wine.

“A toast,” he says, handing me the glass.

“To what?”

He smiles.

“I don’t know. To you?”

“Me?”

He shrugs his shoulders.

“Well, me then?”

“Your book?”

“No, that’s too boring. Taste the wine.”

I laugh and obey him. It’s a delicious wine, silky and served at the perfect temperature, the bottle is standing next to the cooker, where it’s warm from the oven. I sit down at the kitchen table and watch him as he puts the finishing touches on dinner. He looks self-assured in everything he does, every little movement.

As a starter he has made mushroom soup from yellow foot chanterelles. He tells me that he and Stella picked them last autumn, they found this fantastic place and picked several bagfuls. I picture them sitting on the patio cleaning the mushrooms when they got home, spreading newspaper over the table and tipping them all out, a little yellow-and-brown mountain, then starting to clean them, picking out all the needles and lingonberries and leaves, brushing and wiping as confused little insects and spiders tumbled down onto the newspaper and crawled away across the table. It was probably one of those clear, sunny days, one of those perfect October afternoons with sunshine and crisp air and beautiful colors on the trees.

The main course is a casserole of elk meat and bacon, the sauce is dark, Gabriel serves it with a potato gratin cut into squares and a salad of small, pretty leaves with red veins, some kind of dressing drizzled over them, the dressing is dark too, it’s like something you would get in a restaurant.

“That looks wonderful.”

Gabriel smiles, pours more wine into my glass.

“You must taste the meat … I bought it from Anders, he hunts. It’s usually fantastic.”

The meat is tender and must have been stewing for a long time, absorbing the dark sauce, which is full of flavor, the wine complements it perfectly.

“It’s awesome.”

Gabriel laughs and mimics me, he likes to tease me, he thinks it’s funny that I say “awesome,” he tells me I sound as if I’m about fourteen. He tops up my glass again, he has opened another bottle. I feel calm now, pleasantly relaxed and slightly drowsy from the wine, it’s raining outside, hammering on the window ledges. It’s warm in the kitchen, and in the living room when we eventually move, sitting on the sofa and drinking more wine. Gabriel has opened the outer brass doors of the tiled stove, and the thin black doors inside, until only the innermost doors remain closed, sooty and dark with a pattern of holes allowing the glow to shine through in a patchwork of warm orange dots, crackling softly.

We are sitting close together, so close that I can rest my head on his shoulder, he is wearing a shirt and a lamb’s wool sweater, he knows I like him in it. I am faintly aware of his smell, I think vanilla is the most reassuring smell. Like something from when I was a child.

He strokes my hair, a little absentmindedly at first, then he asks me to undo the loose knot I have gathered up at the back of my neck.

“Why?”

“You look so lovely with your hair down.”

I loosen the band holding the knot together and my hair falls down around my shoulders, he reaches
out and adjusts it, arranges it on either side of my face, gazing at me with a serious expression.

“You really are beautiful,” he says quietly.

His eyes are dark now, he gets up from the sofa.

“Come with me,” he says, and I follow him, through the living room and the kitchen and up the stairs, I have to hold on to the banister, I can tell I’m drunk now.

It is dark in the bedroom. He switches on the old lamp on the table at his side of the bed, it has a brass base with an ornate pattern, the shade is made of pale-green velvet with a gold fringe, the light is muted. Through the balcony window I can see Anders and Karin’s apple tree, slightly blurred by the rain, it sparkles all night.

Gabriel opens the door of one of the closets and takes out a dress. It is black and embroidered with small beads, it has thin shoulder straps, it looks expensive. When I see the label on the back I realize it must have been, it says Prada. I look at him.

“What’s that?”

“I bought it for Stella when we were in Italy.”

“It’s gorgeous.”

“You should try it on.”

“What?”

I feel as if my brain is working very slowly. Gabriel smiles at me, pulls down the zipper at the side of the dress.

“You’d look so lovely in it. With your hair exactly like that. It’s such a pity to have it hanging there practically unworn.”

He holds out the dress to me, smiles, nods toward the folding screen next to the closet. It’s old, it wasn’t Gabriel’s grandparents who bought it but some relative long ago, it’s made of wood, with a glossy black lacquer finish, patterns of Asiatic fish with fins like veils, billowing aquatic plants in gold and green. I look at the fish as I get changed, it almost seems as if they are moving, winking at me, I think of the carp in the pond in the greenhouse, their slow movements under the water, I carefully pull on the dress. It is lined with soft silk, it slips easily over my body, it feels cool. It’s almost like diving, I think, like being enveloped by water. I can see myself in the mirror on the wall. It really is a beautiful dress, the most expensive thing I’ve ever had on, and it fits perfectly, I must have lost weight. Stella was always slightly slimmer than me, a little shorter and thinner, her clothes were always half a size too small when I wanted to borrow them, nothing ever fitted quite right. My lips are darker than usual, from the wine, I moisten them, smile tentatively at my reflection.

Gabriel is sitting on the bed, I hear him take a deep breath as I step out from behind the screen.

“Come here,” he says quietly and I obey, crossing the bedroom floor until I am standing in front of him and he touches the fabric of the dress, gently runs his hand over my thigh, looks up at me.

“You are so beautiful,” he murmurs.

His hand is on my thigh again, he draws me a little closer, parts his legs so that I am standing between them, he strokes the back of my thigh and slides his hand upward, I close my eyes, breathing more heavily. He is touching me with both hands now, outside the fabric, then suddenly inside, I gasp as I feel his hands on my skin, softly caressing my thighs, then all at once they are groping toward the back, up beneath the dress, more determined now.

He puts his hands around my waist, I bend down and he puts them around the back of my neck instead, pulling my head toward his, he kisses me and I part my lips, his mouth tastes of wine. I gently draw my nails down the nape of his neck, under the collar of his shirt and he groans, pulls me down onto the bed, on my back. He lies on top of me and carries on kissing me, he touches my hair, gathers it into a bunch, winds it around his hand, he grips my wrist with the other hand, the way he did in the greenhouse last summer, the way he did a few days ago when he was looking at my nail polish, his grip is just as firm now and he is still kissing me, pulling my head back and then letting go of my hair,
running his hand the length of my body instead, over my breasts and my waist, over my thighs, then under my skirt again. I groan, press myself against him, his hands are inside my panties now, he moans as he feels how wet I am.

“Oh my God,” he murmurs, both surprised and aroused, as if he doesn’t believe it’s true, he has to feel again, feel more, I press myself against his hand and he moves it back and forth, I whimper, cling to him, my hands inside his shirt now, I drag my nails down his back and he groans even more loudly, moves his hand faster between my legs, I have stopped thinking, I am conscious of nothing but his hand. I fumble for the button of his jeans, I find it but can’t get it undone, he lets go of my wrist to help.

“Get on all fours,” he says quietly and when I don’t obey immediately he says it again, more sharply this time, I do as he says and he is behind me, touching me outside the dress at first and then inside, he pushes it up, pulls my panties to one side.

Gabriel has started packing, he lets me use his computer during the day. He’s out a lot, getting things sorted, he’s got a lot of stuff to get rid of. He takes several carloads to the dump, and boxes and boxes to a charity, they organize flea markets in the summer, he takes all of Stella’s things there, books and records
and magazines. He says he never really managed to sort out his grandparents’ things when he moved into the house, he just pushed it all into boxes and stored it in the toolshed in the garden, which was already full of boxes they had put there. Now he unpacks them all and goes through the contents, sorting everything out, it keeps him busy for several days. He packs most of it to be given away, but finds a few things he wants to hold on to, he comes to show me when he finds something he likes, he looks happy, as if he has discovered a treasure: old china figurines, books, a box full of poetry by authors I’ve never heard of, Gabriel waves several of the collections at me triumphantly, tells me they are first editions, they are valuable. He’s going to take them with him to Stockholm, he says, and packs them into a different box, he’s going to take a lot of books even though he says he’s taking only the most essential, there are huge gaps on the bookshelves in the living room now.

“How’s it going?” he says, sneaking a look at the computer screen, I scroll down the page, I don’t want him to read it.

“Oh, not too bad,” I mumble. “I’ve written a few pages.”

He stands behind me, gently stroking my hair, his expression preoccupied as he gazes out across the fields. Twilight is falling, the sun sets early and the
wind has got up over the past few days, the clouds are torn to shreds, ragged pink-and-orange clouds glowing on the horizon against the background of the dark sky before the sun disappears completely. Gabriel has bought some hyacinths, two of them are on the balcony and are half out, one pink and one purple, there is already a faint scent in the air.

“It’s cold in your room, isn’t it?” he says.

I look up at him.

“Yes.”

“There’s more of a draft downstairs,” he says. “The windows are older.”

He looks at me, seems to be searching for the right words.

“I’ve been thinking … you can sleep up here with me if you want. I mean, it’s so windy at the moment, it’s stupid for you to lie there freezing at night.”

I don’t know what to say, I merely nod in response, but at bedtime I take my duvet and pillow upstairs, make up the bed with my sheets on Stella’s side and crawl in, waiting for Gabriel to come to bed, beneath the shadows cast on the ceiling by the apple trees in the garden.

It is Gabriel’s turn to choose a record as we sit in the living room the following evening. He has several crates
of vinyl LPs, but he says he has sold at least as many, he regrets it now but he needed the money to pay his rent one summer, it was when he was a student and had just moved to Stockholm. He picks out an album and passes the sleeve to me, I look at it distractedly. The living room smells of hyacinths too now, there are hyacinths on virtually every windowsill, filling the entire house with their perfume. My head feels woolly, it’s felt like that for several days now, I just push things out of my mind; this is the result of not finishing my assignment, of dropped points and the threat of my student loan being withdrawn, it’s too hard, I just avoid thinking about it. This morning I looked up Rossetti’s
The Annunciation
in one of the art books I have with me, his Mary doesn’t look afraid at all, the way I remembered her. She looks as if her mind is somewhere else, she looks determined, as if she is convincing herself that what is taking place in front of her isn’t really happening. I think we are very much alike, Mary and Marina.