Let the Old Dreams Die (38 page)

‘Are we going far?’

‘Not very.’

‘In that case I’ll be fine.’

We drove north towards the outskirts of the city; I’d never been there. It was like an outing. It was just after twelve o’clock on a beautiful winter’s day. Lakes and inlets were frozen, with just the odd swan swimming by outfalls, waiting for summer. I felt as if I was out for the first time in many years.

We turned into a gateway and drove up a steep hill to a tip, I don’t remember what it was called. Majken stopped the car next to the electronic items container, and we got out and opened the bonnet. It turned out that the bags from NK contained lots of small boxes. I don’t know what all that stuff is called, but it was a lot of abbreviations. CD I know, but there were other things too.

Yes, that’s it. MP3, that’s what it said on some of them. And DVB, maybe. Or DVD.

What?

No, there’s no point whatsoever. It isn’t there anymore. Or maybe it is, but Majken had two hammers in the car. One for each of us.

I’m starting to get a bit mixed up now. I think I need a little break, if that’s all right. Perhaps you could talk to me instead.

I’m sorry?

What are you saying—of course he is! Börje hasn’t set foot outside the apartment under his own steam in eight years.

Have they searched the whole apartment?

I don’t know what to say, in that case.

Are you joking? I mean, Börje can’t just have disappeared, he…

No, hang on, listen. What are we thinking? The home care service. That’s it. I haven’t been home for two days. They’ll have taken him with them, of course.

It’s the home care service, they’ve taken him, ha ha.

Where was I?

Oh yes. We took all those black, shiny things out of their boxes
and put them in the boot. Or the front boot, if you like. Then we separated the packaging into plastic and cardboard. All neat and tidy. Majken insisted.

I’d never been to one of those places before, I thought it was fascinating. I only had the eco-cottage to compare it with, and this was the eco-cottage times a hundred. There were whole sofas and kitchen fittings in the containers. In a separate area there were hundreds of fridges all piled up; the only thing missing was a polar bear on the top. Televisions, stoves and armchairs in better condition than the ones I’ve got at home.

There was hardly anybody there at that time of day. A middle-aged man was unloading a trailer full of furniture. He was doing it in a mechanical way, his eyes empty. Perhaps one of his parents had died, who knows.

Anyway, eventually we got to the fun part. We picked up a few of those black machines and carried them over to the container. Majken held up a little device, no bigger than a matchbox for those long matches you use to light the fire.

‘This,’ she said, ‘is worth about five thousand.’

‘Right,’ I said.

I thought it seemed strange, I mean I’ve seen great big brand-new televisions on sale for two thousand. But I suppose it was some kind of computer, and that makes a difference, as far as I understand it.

She held it in the palm of her hand and hit it with the hammer, not particularly hard. It split.

‘And now,’ she said, ‘it’s worth nothing.’

She threw it in the container. I held out the biggest item I’d carried from the car, and asked, ‘What’s this?’

Majken studied it and pressed a button. Nothing happened. She pressed another button and a little screen flipped up.

‘Aha,’ she said. ‘It’s a DVD player. Portable. Expensive.’

‘How expensive?’ I asked.

She shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘Twelve, thirteen thousand. Maybe fifteen. I think people buy that sort of thing to keep the kids quiet in the back seat of the car.’

‘Fifteen
thousand
?’

‘Yes.’ Majken found another button and pressed it. A little tray slid out from the side of the machine. ‘You put a disk in there with a movie on it. Yes, at least fifteen. Maybe even twenty.’

I turned the object over. Twenty thousand. If for some reason I had set my mind on having one of these, I would have had to scrimp and save for at least two years, probably more. It would never have happened. It was like holding a fragment of another world in my hands.

‘Majken,’ I said. ‘I can’t, it’s too…I was brought up to…’

I held out the object to Majken. She didn’t take it, she said nothing. I looked at it again. It was square with rounded corners, matt black.

What was I brought up to do?
I thought.

To have respect for money and the value of money. When a sheet was worn out, my mother saved it to make rag rugs. When a rag rug was worn out, she saved it to put over the potato bin in winter, to protect it from frost.

Today you can buy a sheet for thirty kronor, a rag rug for a hundred. The piece of equipment in my hand was worth twenty thousand, it was…power. Yes. I looked at the concealed buttons, the purity of the design, thought about the town hall where I was summoned after my second arrest. The same blank impenetrability, the same weight. Another world, the world of power.

I hit the little tray with the hammer. It broke and fell at my feet with a clatter. A terrified thrill shot through me. I whacked the screen and it shattered, minute shards of glass scattered across the metal. I gathered my strength and brought the hammer down in the middle so that some of the buttons were crushed before it flew out
of my hand and landed on the ground. I stamped on it a couple of times, feeling it crunch under my foot.

Before I knew it I had laid into everything I had brought over with the hammer. There was a particular pleasure…I don’t know how to explain it…you know that
smell
you get around things that are brand new? That’s what I was dealing with. That’s what I was smashing to pieces.

Majken passed on the things she had carried over, and when I had finished there was scrap metal on the ground all around me. I got up; I felt as if I had a red veil in front of my eyes. Majken looked at the rubbish, nodded and said, ‘A hundred and fifty thousand, maybe. Shall we go and get some more?’

I nodded. We made a couple more trips. We both attacked the rest of the stuff. Bang bang. Majken estimated the total value at around half a million. I couldn’t stop laughing. We tipped the broken glass and bits of metal into the container. There were a couple of televisions in there. I had to stop myself from attacking them. I could have carried on for much longer. One million, two, five.

I twirled the hammer around in my hands. ‘If we all went into the electronics department, if we just…’ I swung the hammer through the air a couple of times. ‘How much do you think we could get through before they managed to stop us?’

‘More,’ said Majken. ‘But then we’d have to pay. Our budget won’t run to that. Unfortunately.’

‘But what if we haven’t got any money?’ I said. ‘Then they’d have to pay anyway, in the end.’

‘No,’ said Majken. ‘They’re insured against that kind of thing.’

‘But surely that’s even better. Then it’s the insurance companies, the bloody insurance companies who’d…’

Majken looked at me sadly. I fell silent, thought about it. I did know how things work, actually. The department stores recoup the costs of shoplifting through increased prices. Insurance companies
do the same thing. If they don’t make enough profit, they raise the premiums. In the end it’s the ordinary individual who has to pay.

I lowered my arms. The hammer dangled loosely in my hand. I looked at the rubbish we’d just thrown in the container.

‘Why are we doing this?’ I asked.

Majken placed her hand on my arm.

‘Because it’s fun,’ she said. ‘No other reason. Come on.’

We went back to the car and drove away from the tip; neither of us spoke for a while. My legs were cold, my entire body was cold now, and I took the blanket from the back seat, wrapped it around me and closed my eyes. The gentle metallic rattle of the car was soothing and I must have nodded off for a while, because when I opened my eyes we were back in the city centre.

‘Shall I drive you home?’ Majken asked.

I saw her profile sharply delineated in the light from the side window. Individual strands of hair glowed bright orange. I suppose she could feel me looking at her, and when she smiled a deep dimple appeared in her cheek.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’d rather not.’

She nodded and drove out towards Djurgården. I leaned against the window, watched the exclusive shops along Strandvägen filing past. Hopeless. Hopeless. I suddenly thought of something: ‘Why weren’t the others with us? At the tip, I mean.’

We crawled across the bridge and Majken turned to face me for a moment before looking back at the road.

‘This was just for you,’ she said.

I can’t say I ever managed to work Majken out.

It’s a shame; I would have liked to get to know her better. Or maybe we just weren’t meant to get really close.

The only thing I don’t understand is why I survived.

How many more died, do you know?

Yes, yes. Later, later.

Always later.

You’ll have to forgive me, those days are all mixed up in my head. I’m not senile, I haven’t got dementia or anything, but as soon as I try to think about those two days with Majken, everything kind of…dissolves. The only thing I remember really clearly is the conversation we had out at Djurgården.

We were sitting in the café by the canal, do you know the one I mean? I think it used to be a boathouse once upon a time. We were drinking hot chocolate with whipped cream. We were both coffee drinkers really, but chocolate with whipped cream seemed appropriate after our expedition to…Malsta, that’s what it’s called. The Malsta tip. Perhaps because the whole thing felt a bit like a game.

‘Are you happy?’ Majken asked when I had scooped the first spoonfuls of whipped cream off my chocolate.

‘Do you mean right now? Or in general?’

‘In general.’

‘No, not at all. Quite the reverse. What about you?’

She shook her head. ‘Too much has disappeared,’ she said. ‘Things you thought were going to happen, but they never did.’

‘Yes.’

We took a few sips in silence. There were quite a lot of people in the café, it was the lunchtime rush, but we had found ourselves a corner where nobody came. A big red bus drove past on the street outside. For a second I saw myself lying beneath its wheels, and I burst out, ‘Do you want to die?’

Majken looked at me with a strange expression on her face. She had a bit of cream on her upper lip.

‘I see you’re just as direct as I am.’ She nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, I do. But wanting to die isn’t enough, or so I’ve heard.’

‘No. They say a plastic bag and sleeping pills are the best method.’

‘If you want to be considerate, yes. If that’s what you want.’

‘What do you mean?’

Majken wiped her mouth with a serviette, took a bite of her Danish pastry. I looked out of the window. I’ve never been very keen on watching people chew.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘the only reason for using that method is because you want to spare the people who find you. You don’t look as terrible as you would with the classical methods. Or so I’ve heard.’

‘The classical methods,’ I said. ‘The ones the Greeks used.’

She laughed.

‘Yes. The death of Socrates, that’s exactly what they do in Holland.’

We talked about euthanasia; we were both in favour. Majken looked at her watch. ‘Don’t you have to get home? To your husband?’

I shook my head. ‘That’s over.’

When I said it I realised it was that simple: it was over. I’d had enough. We drank our hot chocolate, ate our Danish pastries and looked at a solitary swan as he came walking along outside the window, in the middle of the path. I’ve never seen a swan doing that before. I interpreted it as a sign, without knowing what it meant.

Everything was sparkling white when we left the café. A couple of ice-skaters whizzed past on the Djurgård Canal. The people standing waiting in the bus shelter looked anonymous, like names in the phone book.

‘In fact,’ I said, taking in the world around me, ‘in fact we are absolutely free.’

‘If we don’t have any consideration for other people, yes,’ said Majken.

‘And why should we? Who’s shown any consideration for us?’

Majken shrugged. ‘Not many people.’

We stood with our hands in our coat pockets, looking around as
if we were standing at a crossroads and had to choose between right and left. I extricated my hands, and Majken did the same. We took each other’s hands. I can’t say for sure who reached for the other first. For a second I had the dizzying feeling that I was looking in a mirror. I mixed my own face up with Majken’s.

‘Shall we do exactly what we want?’ I asked. ‘And forget about consideration?’

Majken pressed my hands.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Let’s do that.’

Hand in hand we walked past the bus stop towards the car. The people were shop dummies with clothes on.

As I said, it’s difficult to sort out the rest.

But now I’d like to ask
you
something.

Do you remember the duck press, the Christmas present of the year for twelve thousand? You said before that you didn’t know what it was. And yet it’s your job to protect and defend the people who buy duck presses, or bottles of perfume
this small
for two thousand.

How can you do that? How can you?

That’s no answer. You’re not
helping
anyone, apart from those who despise you as they despise me. It’s hardly surprising if we lose it eventually.

By the way, what’s the actual charge?

Arson?

That’s quite…lenient, I have to say. How many people died in there?

Now you’re lying. You’re lying. To cheer me up. But it won’t work. It doesn’t matter.

It was somewhere in Hammarbyhamnen, the same man, the one who bought stuff from Majken when necessary. She spoke to him
and he came out with a box, about this big.

This was the following day, I think. The day after we’d been to… what was the name of the tip again? Malsta, that’s it. This was the day after Malsta, I think. Yesterday, in fact.

I stayed the night at Majken’s. An apartment with lots of flowers. We sat and talked all evening, all night. I think we came up with a kind of…balance sheet. For and against.