Drowned (18 page)

That was her last walk, along the path on the other side of the gravel road. She must also have been conscious of the smell of warm forest that afternoon, the weather stayed hot well into late summer, she was wearing a dress. She was wearing a dress when they pulled her out of the lake. She hadn’t been there long, she didn’t look as horrible as she does in my mind. Not like in films when they pull a body out of a lake. I’ve read about it, what happens to the body after death, I’ve read revolting details even though I don’t really want to know, but nothing like that happened to her, there wasn’t time, she just looked as if she’d been sitting in the bath for too long, as if she’d fallen asleep as the bathwater cooled, as if she’d gotten cold, her lips pale, the tips of her fingers wrinkled. I want
to push the thought away, I don’t want to think about it anymore, not again, I don’t want to think about Stella, not like that.

I can see something bright red moving a short distance away in the forest, it takes a moment for me to realize it’s a person: shapeless, shiny. It’s Karin, in a big red raincoat that surrounds her like a tent. She’s out for a walk with Sture, he slips beneath the ferns like a shadow, sniffs at a tree in passing, seems to be on his guard.

Karin smiles when she catches sight of me.

“Out for a walk?”

“Yes … I don’t really know my way around the forest, but I just wanted to go somewhere different for once.”

She nods.

“You can’t get lost here. There are main roads in two directions and the sea in the third.”

She waves her hand, presumably in the direction of the sea; I think it’s over to the west.

“A cup of coffee would go down very nicely right now,” she says.

I nod.

“Definitely.”

“You will come back to the house with us?” she says, and I realize her comment about the coffee was an invitation.

“Oh … yes please, that would be great.”

• • •

Karin tells me that Anders is in town doing some shopping, she chats away as she makes the coffee in the kitchen, asking if I would prefer cookies or a sandwich. She gives Sture some food in an old china dish, he gobbles it down and it occurs to me that this is the first time I’ve seen him show any enthusiasm about anything.

We sit in the living room again, Karin has to switch on the main light. She says it gets dark so early now, and then there’s the constant rain, it never gets properly light, not even in the middle of the day. The room feels peaceful, there isn’t a sound apart from the soporific drumming of the rain on the window ledges, all the ornaments and framed photographs so neatly arranged on their little crocheted mats, not a speck of dust. A small group of china dogs stands on the bureau, all the same breed as Sture. Karin notices me looking at them.

“I’ve been collecting them since I was young. Although I still haven’t found all that many.”

She smiles, changes the subject and starts talking about her sister who lives in Spain, in Alicante. She and Anders are going to visit her in January, as they usually do. Then it seems as if she feels she has said something inappropriate, and at first I don’t understand what it is, but then I realize that she thinks the
word “sister” might be too difficult for me, that she’s afraid of upsetting me.

“It’s okay,” I say to her, she nods, takes a deep breath.

“Things can’t have been too easy for her,” she says.

“What do you mean?”

“For your sister. Living with him.”

“Gabriel?”

She nods again.

“Didn’t she say anything about it?” she asks.

“About what?”

“How they used to quarrel?”

“No?”

Karin shakes her head.

“I suppose she didn’t want to worry you.”

“I don’t understand. Worry me about what?”

I have put down my coffee cup now.

“Well, we had our suspicions that things weren’t quite right,” she says. “And then she came over here once …”

“Who, Stella?”

“… and she was absolutely beside herself, she was crying, and she said … well, she said he’d hit her.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“They’d had such a terrible quarrel, she was virtually hysterical.”

“No.”

Karin looks at me in surprise.

“I thought she’d told you this.”

I shake my head.

“It isn’t true.”

I feel sick, shaky, perhaps it’s the coffee, or the cold, I want to close my eyes and put my hands over my ears and vanish from the sofa and the table and the plate of cookies, they are dry, crumbly cookies, my jaws crunch them mechanically, I take a swig of coffee to force them down.

“Oh yes it is,” I hear Karin say, she sounds resigned but firm at the same time. “It’s tragic, certainly, but it’s definitely true.”

“When … when was this?” I say, my voice sounds small and weak now.

“It must have been about a year ago. It was last fall.”

I don’t like coming home to a dark house, I get annoyed with Gabriel when he doesn’t leave a couple of lamps lit in the windows, he never thinks about that kind of thing. He likes the dark, he thinks it’s unnecessary when I go around turning on the lights, switching on the lamps upstairs even though no one is there, I have said I find it unpleasant walking up the stairs toward solid darkness, he just laughs, says I’m being silly, overdramatic.

I hurry home from Anders and Karin’s, there are no lights along the gravel road either, but my night vision is good. I follow the edge of the road without any problem, pull the raincoat more tightly around me, it keeps out the wind but not the cold.

Nils is sitting on the steps waiting for me, he meows demandingly as I scrabble for the key in the deep pockets of the raincoat, slinks in quickly as soon as I open the door. Perhaps I ought to ask Gabriel about Advent candles, I think. Perhaps there is a box of Christmas decorations somewhere. There isn’t really much point in putting anything up, since we will both be leaving soon, but perhaps a few candles in the windows, they could be left burning, glowing when we get home.

When I have switched on some lights down below I go upstairs, virtually every step creaks. It is dark up there. I quickly turn on the ceiling light on the little landing, the floor creaks there too. In the bedroom the apple trees are casting their shadows on the sloping ceiling as usual, I switch on the main light to chase them away, sit down on the bed, on Stella’s side, which is mine now, open the drawer of the bedside table. Her diary is still there, the silk cover shining as I take it out. About a year ago, last fall. I flick back through the pages, past notes about my visit, midsummer celebrations with friends, the spring planting,
Christmas, I notice my initial again but I don’t want to stop and read.

The descriptions of last fall are equally sparse. There are notes about meetings with Christmas groups and budgets, weekend outings, the trivia of everyday life, they buy a new coffee machine because Stella has broken the pot belonging to the old one, they see a film she thinks is excellent, Nils has been in a fight and doesn’t seem very well, they take him to the vet, he quickly gets better, I glance through the pages until I reach August and summer without anything in particular having happened, apparently, and then I start again, thinking about what Karin said. I read more carefully this time, Thursday, October 18,
Sometimes I get annoyed when
G doesn’t seem to be working, even though he says he is—I ought to just leave it, mentioned it to L at work. She said as long as he has money, it doesn’t really matter, does it? No doubt she’s right
, Tuesday, October 23,
The sweep was supposed to come and check the chimney but G has been out twice when he turned up. I didn’t want to light the fire tonight, I don’t like it when it doesn’t feel safe, but G insisted. Thought I could smell burning all evening
.

Is there an undertone of frustration in these brief notes, or am I imagining things? How would I have read them if I had been sure everything was fine between Stella and Gabriel? I imagine the scene
with the chimney sweep, as Stella tells Gabriel he can surely take some responsibility given that he’s home all day, he replies that he’s working, that he went out for a walk, surely he’s allowed to go out for a walk, he forgets things when he’s in the middle of a novel, Stella snorts, mumbles something about the fact that he’s been in the middle of this particular novel for a hell of a long time now. Then he lights a fire in the tiled stove, even though she asks him not to. Perhaps she says “What if the chimney catches fire!,” he says it hasn’t so far, you don’t need to have the chimney swept as often as the sweeps say anyway, of course there’s a margin, of course they say it needs to be done frequently, that’s how they make their living after all. Perhaps she is having one of those days when she’s easily provoked, easily hurt or annoyed, perhaps she says “Well I have no intention of being here if you’re going to light the fire,” he says “Suit yourself,” she goes into the hallway, pulls on her boots and raincoat, goes out, where does she go?

Or maybe it wasn’t like that at all. Maybe it was just like when I asked Gabriel to leave the lamps on, he said “That’s not really necessary,” I said I thought it was unpleasant, coming home to a dark house, he smiled, said “Silly girl” in a tone of voice that was kind, even loving, but at the same time made it clear
that he had no intention of leaving any lamps on, and that I would just have to put up with it.

“Can’t you smell burning?” I imagine her saying to him, he laughs, says “Silly girl” in that kindly tone of voice. Perhaps I should have stuck to my guns with the lamps, I think. Not let him end the discussion by calling me silly.

I pick up the diary again. Wednesday, November 11, My
hair has been a mess for such a long time now, I was going to have it cut tomorrow, I wanted quite a bit taken off. Gabriel wouldn’t hear of it
. There is nothing the following day about how things turned out. I try to remember whether Stella had her hair cut or not, but last Christmas there wasn’t much difference in her hair, she can’t have had quite a bit taken off. Maybe she just had a trim. I read the last sentence again,
Gabriel wouldn’t hear of it
.

He goes straight into the kitchen when he gets home, he seems to be in a good mood. He whistles as he prepares dinner, slicing carrots into thin batons with the sharp kitchen knife, it is so sharp that I daren’t use it. I can just imagine slipping and cutting myself deeply and not even noticing it, not feeling it because the cut would be so thin, not realizing until the chopping board was covered in blood. Gabriel is not afraid of knives, he handles this one with confidence, cutting
thin pieces of carrot that will soften as soon as they hit the heat, mingling with the slender strips of leek that have already been prepared and are waiting in a bowl, they will look pretty against the blue-and-white china. He is still whistling as he opens a bottle of wine, pours a glass.

“Would you like a drink?”

He holds up the glass, smiling. The light from above shines through the dark wine making it glow red, it’s a lovely color.

I nod, he puts the glass in front of me, pours himself one. I sit down at the kitchen table and leaf distractedly through a fashion magazine that came in the mail for Stella, her subscription lasts for several more months, it ought to be canceled. He starts whistling again, opens a can of coconut milk. I take a sip of the wine, turn a few more pages.
Celebrity hair special. You too can look like the stars. Long or short? The shape of your face is key!
Suddenly I get an idea.

“I was thinking of having my hair cut,” I say.

“Oh yes?” he says, he sounds a little surprised but doesn’t turn around, carries on messing with the can opener, it doesn’t seem to be working.

“This would look good on me, don’t you think?” I say, holding up the magazine to show him a big picture of a French actress with a wavy pageboy style, cut short at the nape of her neck.

He comes and stands beside me at the table, contemplates the picture.

“It’s a bit short, isn’t it?” he says.

“Is it?”

“You have such beautiful hair.”

He places his hand on my head, slides it over my hair and down to my shoulder.

“I think it would be a shame to cut it so short.”

I shake my head.

“I’ve always had long hair, I’m sick of it.”

“I think it would be stupid.”

I feel him gathering my hair into a bunch at the back of my neck, winding it around his hand.

“Maybe I don’t care what you think,” I say quietly.

He is pulling my hair now, forcing my head back until I am looking straight up at the ceiling, just like on the patio last summer, but then it felt completely different, it was what I wanted him to do. He leans over me, gazes at me in silence before suddenly letting go of my hair and going back to his chopping board.

“Do whatever you want,” he says.

My scalp hurts. He is stronger than he thinks. Or else he knows exactly how strong he is.

I watch him adding chicken to the wok, followed a little while later by the carrots and leeks, he flips them over quickly and decisively. When he has added the
coconut milk and is dropping the empty can in the garbage bag he happens to catch it on the edge of the cupboard door, it falls out of his hand onto the floor.

“Fucking
hell
!” he shouts, with such force that I jump. He holds up his hand to show me, there is blood on the inside of his thumb, slowly trickling down toward his palm.

“What happened?”

I quickly move over to him, tear off a piece of paper towel, take hold of his hand, and gently wipe away the blood. It is a small cut that doesn’t look particularly deep, it stops bleeding almost immediately, but he still swears several times, kicks the empty can so that it hits the skirting board next to the spot where Nils has his food, spattering coconut milk across the floor and the wallpaper.