Let the Old Dreams Die (22 page)

‘And that scream…I was sure it would come out if she turned around, because as I stood there, I don’t know why, but I became more and more convinced that if…if she turned around…she wouldn’t have a face.

‘We stood there. This was late summer, so…I don’t know how much time passed, but it started to get dark outside. The lights outside came on, and still we stood there. I couldn’t move. Every muscle in my body was numb, and the longer I stood there, the more certain I became that I would never be able to move, and my thoughts…my thoughts…got weaker and weaker too. If you imagine your thoughts like someone talking inside your head, it was as if the person who was talking…was sinking. Or disappearing. Sinking down into something. Being suffocated.

‘And when you stop thinking. That’s when it gets dangerous.’

For the last few minutes Matte’s gaze had been fixed on something far away, or deep inside himself. Now he brought it back and looked at me.

‘Do you know what happens if you stop thinking? If there’s nothing to take in from the outside? Do you know what comes instead?’

I thought about it for a few seconds. Then I said, ‘Life?’

Matte slapped his thigh, smacking it with such vigour that I jumped. He leapt up out of the armchair and grabbed hold of my face with both hands.

‘Brilliant! Bloody brilliant!’

I didn’t understand what was so brilliant, but Matte was absolutely beside himself for a moment. He shook my head back and forth, staring into my eyes. Then he suddenly seemed to become aware of what he was doing; he let go of me, took a step backwards and ran a hand over his face.

‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to…I was just so…pleased. That you understand.’

‘Well, I don’t know about…’

‘You don’t see the same thing as me, you’re not me, but just the fact that you said it, that that’s what you said when I…Life, yes. When there’s nothing to see, when there are no thoughts, life comes instead. Naked. And you know, as I stood there in that room…you know what my life was like at the time. My mother drove into a rock face with my brother, you know.’

‘But that was an accident, right?’

‘I don’t think so. I won’t go into details, but…I don’t think so. In the middle of the day, no oncoming traffic, just straight into the rock face…no. I don’t think so.’

‘Fucking hell, Matte.’

‘Yes. Fucking hell, Matte. Although you know how it is when you’re young…you want to live. You keep yourself busy, you find stuff. Like I did with
The Wall
. But as I stood in that room staring at her back, when I’d been standing like that for a long time…it came. Like a horrible black darkness, slowly being poured into my body. It started in my stomach. The weight. And it just kept on pouring in until it filled my head as well. My life…there wasn’t just a wall between me and other people, I
lived inside
that black wall, I…it’s impossible to describe it. But it was black. Completely black. That was actually when I really lost the plot. The other stuff, that was just…a consequence.’

‘What other stuff?’

‘Well, eventually I managed to move. One step at a time. Went
over to her. But slowly, I was moving inside that wall, you see, and my progress was…slow.’

Matte held a hand out in the air as if he were putting on the brakes, then he went over to the stereo and switched it on. Several red diodes began to glow.

‘I set this up before you came. To fit in with my lecture. Do you know what track four on
The Wall
part two is called?’

‘No.’

‘It’s called “Vera”.’

‘Just like—’

‘Yes. Just like. Now listen carefully.’

Matte pressed Play on the tape deck and a lonely note emerged from the speakers. Then, in the distance, a voice that sounded like something on short wave radio…a few words were called out in the background…more radio voices…a machine gun or something like that… a voice calling something…an explosion, then the vocal started.

Matte stopped the tape. ‘Did you hear it?’

I shook my head. ‘What am I supposed to hear? Vera Lynn? Was her name Lynn too?’

Matte rewound the tape, turned up the volume and pressed Play again. I leaned closer to the speakers and closed my eyes.

The note…the radio voices…the words being called out and…

I sat bolt upright on the sofa and looked at Matte. He pressed Stop.

‘Did you hear?’

‘Play it again.’

Matte rewound a few seconds, pressed Play.

The radio voices…the words…

I could hear it clearly this time. I was able to make out the words. The voice shouting in the background was calling:
‘All you children! Come in! Welcome!’

Matte stopped the tape, pressed the eject button, took out the tape and showed it to me.

‘This is the tape I got from her. The same one.’

‘But…what does it mean?’

Matte came and sat down in the armchair again, placing the tape on the table next to the photograph. He sat there for a while with his hands on his knees, not speaking. Then he pointed at the photograph.

‘I’d hoped that would confirm what I’ve been thinking. And it has.’

I leaned forward, but Matte placed his hand over the photograph.

‘Wait. One thing at a time. So eventually I reached her. And as I said: I no longer had any thoughts. So I prodded her in the back. And the same thing happened as in school. No reaction. But I wasn’t afraid anymore, I was…nothing. So I walked around her and looked at her face. She had a face, but…how can I put this…she wasn’t in it. She wasn’t there. It was quite dark in the room by this stage, just the lights from outside shining in, but I looked at her eyes and it was as if they were made of glass. Open. But empty. And then…I don’t know why I did it, but it was probably for the same reason as a dog licks its balls.’

‘Which is?’

‘Because it can. So…I unbuttoned her blouse to…to see what she looked like. Or to get a reaction. I don’t know. I was pretty much out of it.’

Matte pointed to several spots on his chest, his stomach.

‘There were holes. Spread irregularly all over this part of her body. Twelve holes, as deep and wide as…I could get two fingers inside.’

‘Matte. For God’s sake, that’s…’

‘I know. I know. Do you think I don’t know? But there’s nothing I can do about it. That’s the way it was. I examined her head. There
were a couple of holes there too. There were probably more, but by that stage I’d lost it completely. What happened next…I don’t remember at all.’

Matte hadn’t drunk any tea. Now he filled his cup with the tepid liquid in the pot and knocked it back in one go. I noticed that his hand was shaking. He pointed at the photograph.

‘Now you can look. Use the magnifying glass. Look at her feet. Hang on.’

He got up and switched on the main light, then stood with his arms folded, looking at me encouragingly. I picked up the magnifying glass and studied the photograph.

She was wearing the blouse with the big leaves on it. The only odd things I could remember about her were that vaguely unpleasant feeling, and the fact that she always wore the same clothes. And then of course there was the business with the tape, but then that was…

It’s possible to rig that kind of thing, of course. If you want to. But why?

I looked at her feet. There was nothing strange about her feet. Ordinary feet in a pair of white trainers. Matte’s gaze was burning into the back of my neck.

I realised he was crazy, one way or another. He’d got some kind of fixed idea, had—what’s it called?—rationalised something he’d done, whatever it might be. Created a reason.

I shook my head slowly.

‘Matte, I—’

‘Look at the grass. Underneath her feet.’

I looked at the grass underneath her feet. Then I looked at the grass under Ulrika’s, Kenneth’s, Staffan’s and my own feet. Then I looked at the grass under her feet again.

It was standing up.

The grass underneath our feet was flattened down, of course.
Underneath hers it was standing up. As if she weighed nothing.

Something round and sticky descended through my throat and landed in my stomach. This was my photograph. It had been down in my cellar. There wasn’t a cat in hell’s chance that anyone could have tampered with it, as someone could have tampered with the tape.

As if he had read my thoughts, Matte picked up the tape and shook it demonstratively.

‘You could take this to anyone who’s an expert in that kind of thing, and he’d tell you nobody has done anything to this tape in twenty years.’

‘But…is that voice…her voice on the original?’

My own voice sounded weird, as if I were speaking through a piece of fabric. Matte shook his head.

‘No. I’ve checked. The other sounds are there, the other voices, but that particular voice…on the original it’s a man’s voice. But the interesting thing, the really interesting thing…you saw the grass?’

I nodded and whispered, ‘What did you do?’

Matte waved the question away.

‘I’m getting to the interesting bit. I’ve got a theory, you know. As you’ve perhaps realised I’ve spent that last twenty years in different…places. In order to become whole, or whatever it is you’re supposed to become. Functioning. I saw the way you looked at my apartment when you arrived, and no, I haven’t a clue. I’ve just tried to… simulate a life.

‘But I’ve met a lot of people in the places where I’ve been. And Vera isn’t the only one, let me tell you. I think she was quite special because of her extreme…incompleteness. But they’re everywhere. People who are lacking something. Or a lot of things. And I don’t even know if they are people, they might be something else.

‘In fact, they probably are something else. They’re here instead
of someone else, they slip in through that gap and…I’m not sure, but I think there are more and more of them around.

‘I checked with the school last week, by the way. It took a while and they weren’t exactly thrilled about it, but they dug out lists of everyone who’s worked there since the place was built. Teachers, substitute teachers, the lot. Salary records. And apart from a headmistress at the end of the fifties, no one called Vera has ever worked in that school. Not even for one day.

‘I presume they’d forgotten to book a substitute teacher for us, and she slipped in through the gap. That’s what I think.’

I picked up the magnifying glass again, looked at the photograph. There was no doubt about it. Now that I knew, it just looked insane: the grass standing up under her feet, the shadows falling differently around her.

I just couldn’t take it in. I scrubbed my face hard with my hands, as if to rub away a sticky crust.

‘What do you mean? What do you mean, more and more of them? Why are there more and more of them?’

‘Why does a dog lick its balls?’

‘Because it can.’

‘Yes.’

Matte gestured towards the window.

‘Because they can. Out there…You’ll have to excuse me. I’m so used to thinking about the world in general as
out there
. But out there, everything is based on the idea that things are interchangeable, isn’t it? Temporary staff, short-term relationships, substitutes, substitutes, substitutes. I’m not moralising, it’s just a fact. Someone disappears, someone else turns up instead. All the time. Spaces appear, gaps, and then…then they just slide in. But do you know what the worst thing is? They themselves don’t know.’

‘Don’t know what?’

‘That they’re substitutes. They think they’re people. Of course
they’re not usually missing a finger or an ear, it’s usually something else. Something else is missing. Something is lacking. Less obvious than a finger, but equally perceptible. So we take our medication, we try—’

‘We?’

‘Yes, we. What’s to say that you and I aren’t substitutes too? How much is left of us? My illness, my so-called illness…’

Matte sighed and sank down in the armchair. He looked so small. It was as if the armchair threatened to swallow him up. If he let go the black, worn imitation leather would wrap itself around him. I felt the same thing, and straightened up. If I stayed where I was I would disappear. Before I had time to get to my feet, Matte said, ‘Mental illness is about not being able to see the world as it is. My illness… the root of my illness, the reason I take medication, the experience I have to suppress, is that it’s already happened.’

‘What’s already happened?’

‘The substitutes have already taken over. There are no people left anymore. And if you look at life in that way, it becomes pretty… pointless. There will be nothing left.’

I stood up. I couldn’t listen to this any longer.

‘Matte. I have to go home. My son is coming tomorrow, and it’s…I’ve got a few things to sort out.’

‘I understand. Thanks for coming.’

I wanted to turn around, go into the hallway, pick up my coat and then walk or run to the subway station. But it wasn’t finished. My feet refused to move. When Matte noticed that I was still standing there, he looked up at me, and his face was utterly naked. He asked, ‘Do you believe me?’

The answer wouldn’t come. There was both a yes and a no, in fact, and neither of them wanted to come out. Instead the question came again.

‘What did you do?’

Matte shook his head slowly, and the shadow of a smile passed over his lips.

‘It doesn’t matter. I must have…destroyed it in some way. With a cupboard door, perhaps. From the kitchen. I remember the edges against the palms of my hands, unhooking a cupboard door. Yellow. A yellow cupboard door, although it looked more like…orange in the darkness. I remember that. There was nothing there, you see. So I unhooked a kitchen door. I remember that. Then nothing. But I think I must have destroyed it…her in some way. The way they treated me afterwards would suggest that’s what happened. And then she moved in there.’

Matte waved in the direction of the table.

‘Moved in where?’

‘Into the music. Sorry. I didn’t say, did I. That tape…I listened to it several times before…before this happened. And her voice wasn’t there then. It was only afterwards, after I’d…done it that she moved in. That her voice appeared.’

Matte picked up the tape, twisting it between his fingers and looking at it as if he were contemplating the only memento of a much-loved relative.