Drowned (5 page)

I tell him how much my friend and I liked
Ophelia
, and that I loved the photo of him inside the front cover, a black-and-white picture of a young Gabriel leaning against a birch tree, it looks like late spring, the leaves on the tree are still small enough to let through plenty of light, the dappled, impressionistic
light of late spring. Gabriel is wearing a black jacket and a white shirt, he is holding a cigarette in his hand and looking straight into the camera. I thought he looked so worldly, so unattainable.

He laughs, tells me I’m sweet. Stella hadn’t read any of his books when they met, he says. She hardly even knew who he was. They met at a party while she was still a student, he tells me how beautiful he thought she was, pale skin and strawberry-blonde hair, I swallow, I have to look away, gaze at the moon, which has moved a little farther across the sky, it just seems to be getting bigger and bigger. Stella was wearing a white cardigan, he says, and I know the one he means, I envied her that cardigan. She wore it one Christmas at Mom and Dad’s, white angora, she had her hair up and she looked both severe and soft at the same time in her silky cardigan, she looked like someone I would never have dared to talk to if she hadn’t been my sister. I tell him this and he laughs again, says he wouldn’t have had the nerve either if he hadn’t been drinking, he says she looked so young, he is watching me over the rim of his glass, seems on the verge of saying something more, but changes his mind.

He is already sitting on the patio when I wake up, reading the newspaper with his feet on the table, a
blue-and-white coffee cup beside them. The clear air has become misty, but the heat has not diminished. It is different now, sultry and oppressive, as if a thunderstorm is coming. Swallows swoop across the grass, their movements rapid and erratic, flickering. They are flying low now, the approaching storm means the insects they are hunting stay close to the ground, it’s to do with the air pressure, it forces them downward, Stella has explained it to me. My head feels fragile, as if a headache is just coming to life deep inside and will soon make its presence felt, sending out crackling impulses of pain that will thud against my forehead and my temples, as if I were inside a thunder ball. I think I ought to take a painkiller just to be on the safe side, I think about the cool rustle of the foil inside the box of tablets.

“I was going to cut the grass but I haven’t got the energy in this heat,” says Gabriel. “There’s coffee in the machine if you want some.”

When I come back with my coffee and a sandwich he passes me a section of the newspaper. I open it but can’t be bothered to read anything, instead I watch Gabriel, who is half hidden behind his section, he’s wearing a T-shirt today as well, I stare at his sunburnt arms. He puts the paper down on the table, quickly looks up at me, I meet his eyes and smile, he smiles back, glances distractedly at the recipe of the day on
the back page, smoked mackerel with some kind of cold sauce. Then he pushes the newspaper away.

“So … what about going for a swim?”

“Sure … but where?”

He shrugs his shoulders.

“Wherever you like. There’s a lake, it’s about ten minutes’ walk from here. Or we could drive to the sea. It’s not very far.”

“The sea sounds fantastic.”

He gets to his feet.

“I’ll go and get some towels.”

All the plants in the garden have been affected by the heat. The orange nasturtiums are hanging their heads and looking limp. There’s a water shortage, you’re not really supposed to water the garden, but Stella does the rounds with her big watering can every evening anyway. She has taught me that you shouldn’t water during the day, because the water evaporates straightaway, before it’s had a chance to get beyond the surface, and it does no good. I’d still like to give the weary nasturtiums a good shower.

When I look closer I can see that the undersides of the leaves are covered in aphids, great black clumps of them, they are on the stems bearing the flower heads too, covering them completely so that the stems look thick and black, uneven. The more I look, the more aphids I see. In the end I almost believe they’re
multiplying before my very eyes, that the clumps on the underside of the leaves are slowly swelling, expanding. I turn away in disgust.

Gabriel hands me a towel.

“There’s blackfly on the nasturtiums,” I say.

“Happens every year.”

The car is as hot as a sauna. The sun has been shining on the seats and they burn my thighs through my skirt, it smells of hot plastic, stuffy. When Gabriel turns the key, nothing happens. He tries several times, but the car refuses to start.

“What the fuck?” he mumbles crossly.

After at least fifteen attempts he gives up, leaves the keys dangling in the ignition and leans back in his seat with a resigned expression.

“Shall we walk to the lake instead?” I say.

He looks at me, gazes at me for several seconds, but doesn’t reply. I look him straight in the eye, I haven’t thought about the color of his eyes before, it’s difficult to tell what it is. I hear him take a deep breath, then he leans over, places a hand behind my head, pulls me firmly toward him and kisses me. His kiss is also firm, he nearly forces my lips apart, hungrily, and I allow him to do it, I let his tongue into my mouth, he tastes of coffee and he smells good this time too, the same smell as when I wiped the paint off his forehead. I put my arms around him. He is breathing
heavily now, I feel his hand through the fabric of my dress, feel it move across my back and I shudder with pleasure, press myself closer to him. Then he stops himself, places a hand on his forehead, looks almost tormented. His face is shiny, it must be 100 degrees in the car, 110, maybe more.

“We …” he begins, but breaks off.

He opens the door and gets out, running his hand through his hair.

“I’ll call Anders and see if he’s got time to come and take a look at the car.”

“Okay,” I say.

Gabriel is halfway up the path now, walking quickly. I open my door and realize my legs are shaking as I put my feet on the gravel next to the car. He stops and turns around.

“It’s not difficult to find your way to the lake if you want a swim,” he says. “You just follow the gravel road, then there’s a path through the forest on the right, maybe five minutes away. You can’t miss it.”

“Okay,” I say again.

Gabriel disappears into the house. I take my towel and set off toward the road.

It’s a small lake, the trees around it are tall and straight and the water looks black from a distance, but it’s actually yellowish and quite warm. There’s a little sandy
beach, but the sand gives way beneath my feet and I can tell there is mud underneath, a thin layer of pale sand on top of thick black mud. Perhaps that’s what quicksand feels like, I think, and I am afraid to stand in the same spot for too long, afraid that the ground will give way beneath my feet, trapping me, dragging me down. There isn’t a soul in sight, everything is still and silent apart from a bird repeating its long, drawn-out scream, I wonder what it might be, a black-throated diver perhaps, I’m really bad at recognizing bird calls. It sounds horrible. I’m sure there must be crayfish in the lake, I can see them in my mind’s eye, their black shapes crawling along the bottom, big clumps of them, like the blackfly.

We learned to swim quite late, Stella and I. Somehow it seemed to me that I would never need to know how to do it, and I think Stella felt the same way. Every holiday when we were little we went to some cottage by the sea, to sandy Swedish beaches shelving gently into the water, saltspray roses in full bloom, stranded jellyfish, coarse gray-green grass and the sand at the water’s edge, solid and compacted, sometimes etched with grooves from the waves in a way that seemed too good to be true, unnatural, as if someone had raked the entire shoreline just like the gravel path outside the church where we had our end-of-semester celebrations. We would sit on the
sand right at the water’s edge, where the water is at its warmest, we would walk around with our hands on the bottom, like crocodiles in tepid water, we would play ball and jump in the waves, but I never remember us swimming, I don’t remember Stella swimming even though she was so much older than me. Swimming lessons in school were one long torment, everyone else had already learned to swim during the summer holidays and I ended up paddling around clumsily with a float around my waist, like two great big external orange lungs on my back. I hated the pungent smell of chlorine, and the swimming pool was ugly, I could feel it very clearly even if I was unable to put it into words at the time: water was not my element. I learned to swim eventually, the last in the class and very reluctantly, but I still don’t enjoy it. I don’t know how Stella feels, we haven’t talked about it for years.

It is with a mixture of fear and pleasure that I close my eyes and sink beneath the surface of the water. I have that same strong feeling now, that I don’t belong in the water, but I think that perhaps it can be changed, perhaps I can become someone else. Perhaps it’s already happening. Even though the water is warm, almost too warm, it feels cool against my face. I think about Gabriel’s kiss, his firm hand behind my head, on the back of my neck. When I open my eyes
underwater my hands look white in the yellowness, my nail polish looks orange, it looks grubby, dirty. I lie on my back instead, feeling my hair float out across the water around my face. A few black alder cones are bobbing on the surface of the water a short distance away, and a dragonfly darts just above, its movements jerky.

I could drown and die here and nobody would notice, I think to myself, they would have to drag the lake for my body, they would find it down in the mud. I wonder if there are eels here, eels are scavengers, they eat people who have drowned. I daren’t push my feet too far down for fear of touching something disgusting on the bottom, down there where the water is chilly. The alders are standing in a row on the shoreline, the sand has been washed away from around their roots, they are black and slippery, like black snakes reaching down into the water, I hurry out, suddenly convinced that the yellow water smells fetid. I jump as one of my wet curls tickles my shoulder, tumbling down my back, I quickly wrap the towel around my head, trapping them. The alders are reflected in the surface of the water, standing dark and silent in a row along the shoreline, there isn’t a sound.

I don’t have a change of clothes with me, and have to pull on my dress over my wet swimsuit. Do they usually come here to swim? I wonder. Stella and
Gabriel. Does he pull her toward him in the same way, forcing her lips apart, pressing himself against her? You could do anything here, no one would see. What would we have done if he had come with me? The thought excites me, his hands on my body, warm against my skin, which is covered in gooseflesh after my swim, one hand fastened around my wrist in a firm grip, the other hand under my dress, touching my thigh. I close my eyes. I would let him do anything he wants, I think, and am instantly surprised by my own thought, but yes, I think it again. Anything he wants, anything at all.

Stella and Gabriel are standing next to Gabriel’s car when I get back, I recognize the neighbor Anders, who is leaning over the engine, looking concerned. Gabriel is wearing the same expression. Anders nods to me as I pass by.

“There’s something wrong with the engine,” says Stella.

“Oh right, that’s not good.”

Gabriel doesn’t look at me. Stella follows me into the house.

“Was the water warm?” she wonders.

“It sure was.”

“It usually is, it’s so shallow.”

“Do you know if there are any crayfish?”

“What?”

“In the lake.”

“Oh … no, I don’t think so.”

“What about eels?”

Stella smiles.

“I don’t know, ask Gabriel. Are you thinking of going fishing?”

“No, I just wondered.”

We eat in silence, it’s late, it’s growing dark outside. Stella has lit the paraffin lamp on the veranda. Gabriel has barbecued some meat, fillet of beef, it’s red in the center and has been cooked in one piece, lying there on the barbecue like a long, thick sausage. I am having difficulty eating it. They haven’t sorted out the car, someone is coming to pick it up tomorrow to take it to a repair shop.

“The water lilies should be flowering now,” says Stella. “Did you see them?”

It’s a few seconds before I realize she’s talking to me.

“Oh, in the lake?”

“Yes, in the lake.”

She sounds annoyed and makes no attempt to hide it. She was complaining about a headache earlier, and about the heat. I know she’s worried about the car too, that it will be expensive, that things are going
to be difficult while it’s being fixed. If Gabriel can’t get around she will have to give him lifts, and she’s the one who will have to do all the shopping and so on until it’s back.

“No … I didn’t see any water lilies.”

“Maybe you just didn’t notice them.”

“I would have.”

“Maybe you just didn’t notice them,” she repeats.

“There were no water lilies.”

“There must have been. There are lots of them.
Nymphaea alba
. Oh, by the way—do you know if there are any crayfish in the lake?”