My Struggle: Book 2: A Man in Love (43 page)

‘That was a nice evening, wasn’t it,’ I said.

‘Yes, it was,’ she said.

‘Did they have a good time, do you think?’ I asked, getting into bed next to her.

‘Yes, I think so. Don’t you?’

‘Yes, I really do. I enjoyed it anyway.’

The light from the street lamps cast a faint glimmer across the floor. It was never properly dark in here. And never properly quiet. Fireworks were still exploding outside, voices rose and fell in the street, cars raced by, more now that New Year’s Eve was nearing its end.

‘But I’m beginning to get seriously worried about our neighbour,’ Linda said. ‘It doesn’t feel good having her there.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘There isn’t a lot we can do though.’

‘No.’

‘Geir reckoned she was a prostitute,’ I said.

‘She is, no question about it,’ Linda said. ‘She works for one of those escort companies.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘It’s obvious.’

‘Not to me,’ I said. ‘The thought would never have crossed my mind in a million years.’

‘That’s because you’re so naïve,’ Linda said.

‘Maybe I am.’

‘You are.’

She smiled, leaned over and kissed me.

‘Goodnight,’ she said.

‘Goodnight,’ I said.

It was difficult to comprehend that actually there were three of us in bed. But there were. The baby in Linda’s belly was fully developed; all that separated us was a centimetre-thin wall of flesh and skin. The baby could be born any day now and this defined Linda’s behaviour. She no longer started anything new, barely went out, kept calm, cosseted herself and her body, took long baths and watched films on the sofa, dozed and slept. Her state was like dormancy, but her disquiet had not entirely left her. Now it was particularly my role in the drama that concerned her. On the antenatal course we had been told that the relationship between the pregnant woman and the midwife was important, and if there were any disagreements, if there was a bad atmosphere of any kind, it was important to say so as early as possible in order that another, hopefully better-suited, midwife could take over. Furthermore, we were told that the man’s role during the birth was primarily that of a communicator; he knew his wife best of all, he would understand what she wanted and, as she was otherwise engaged, he would have to be the person to pass this on to the midwife. This was where I came in. I spoke Norwegian. Would the midwives and nurses even understand what I said? And, much worse, I avoided conflict and was always considerate to everyone in any situation. Would I be able to say no to a potentially awful midwife and demand a new one, with all the hurt feelings that might entail?

‘Relax, relax, it’ll be fine,’ I responded, ‘don’t think about it, everything will sort itself out,’ but she couldn’t settle, I had become the cause of her worry. Would I even be able to ring for a taxi when the moment came?

That she had a point did not make the matter any easier. Any form of pressure knocked me out. I wanted to please everyone, but sometimes there were situations where I had to make a decision and act upon it, and then I suffered dreadful agonies, these were among my most unpleasant experiences. Now I had lived through a series of them over a short period and she had been a witness. The incident with the locked door, the boat incident, the incident with my mother. And the time when I compensated for all this by intervening in a fight one morning on the Metro didn’t do me much credit either, because what sort of judgement had I shown? And, more importantly, I knew it would be more difficult for me to show a midwife the door than to be stabbed with a knife in a Metro station.

Then, on my way home late one afternoon, putting down my laptop case and the two shopping bags to press the button on the outside lift up to Malmskillnadsgatan, I happened to glance at my phone and saw that Linda had rung eight times. As I was so close, I didn’t ring back. I waited for the lift, which was taking an eternity to come down. I turned round and met the eyes of a tramp dozing against the wall in a sleeping bag. He was thin and his face was discoloured. There was no curiosity in his gaze, but nor was it one of apathy. It just registered my presence. Filled with concern about that and the uncertainty Linda’s calls had created, I stood still in the lift as it slowly made its way up the shaft. As soon as it stopped, I tore open the door and ran along the pavement, down David Bagares gata, in the front door and up the stairs.

‘Hello?’ I called. ‘Has something happened?’

No answer.

She must have gone to the hospital under her own steam. Had she?

‘Hello?’ I called again. ‘Linda?’

I took off my boots, went into the kitchen and peeped inside the bedroom door. No one there. I realised the shopping bags were still hanging from my arms and put them on the worktop before going through the bedroom and opening the living-room door.

She was in the middle of the floor staring at me.

‘What’s up?’ I asked. ‘Has something happened?’

She didn’t answer. I went over to her.

‘What’s happened, Linda?’

Her eyes were black.

‘I haven’t felt anything all day,’ she said. ‘It feels as if there’s something wrong. I can’t feel anything.’

I put my arm around her. She wriggled away.

‘Everything’s fine,’ I said. ‘I’m sure of it.’

‘IT BLOODY WELL ISN’T FINE!’ she yelled. ‘Don’t you understand anything? Don’t you understand what has happened?’

I tried to hold her again, but she wormed away.

She started to cry.

‘Linda, Linda,’ I said.

‘Don’t you understand what’s happened?’ she repeated.

‘Everything’s fine,’ I said. ‘I’m sure of it.’

I waited for another shout. Instead she lowered her hands and looked at me with her eyes full of tears.

‘How can you be so sure?’

I didn’t reply at first. Her undeviating stare felt like an accusation.

‘What do you want us to do?’ I asked.

‘We have to go to hospital.’

‘Hospital?’ I said. ‘Everything is as it
should
be. Babies move less the closer you are to birth. Come on, everything’s great. It’s just . . .’

It was only then, as I met her expression of disbelief, that I realised this might be serious.

‘Get your coat on,’ I said. ‘I’ll ring for a taxi.’

‘Ring and tell them we’re coming first,’ she said.

I shook my head and went to the telephone on the windowsill.

‘We’ll just go straight there,’ I said, picking up the receiver and dialling the number for the central taxi switchboard. ‘They’ll help us when we arrive.’

While waiting to get through I watched her. Slowly, as though not present in her movements, putting on her coat, winding the scarf around her neck, putting first one then the other foot on the trunk to tie her shoelaces. In the hall, where she was standing, every detail stood out clearly against the dark living room. Tears were still running down her cheeks.

Beep followed beep as nothing happened.

She was watching me now.

‘I haven’t got through yet,’ I said.

Then the beeps stopped.

‘Stockholm Taxis,’ said a woman’s voice.

‘Yes, hello, I need a taxi to come to Regeringsgatan 81.’

‘Yes . . . and where are you going?’

‘Danderyd Hospital.’

‘Right.’

‘How long will it be?’

‘About fifteen minutes.’

‘That’s no good,’ I said. ‘This is for a birth. We need a taxi immediately.’

‘What did you say it was for?’

‘A birth.’

I realised she didn’t understand the Norwegian word for birth,
fødsel
. A few seconds passed while I searched for the correct Swedish word.

‘
Förlossning
,’ I said at last. ‘We need a taxi right away.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she said. ‘But I can’t promise anything.’

‘Thank you,’ I replied and rang off, checked I had my credit card in my inside jacket pocket, locked the door and joined Linda in the corridor. She didn’t meet my eyes once on the way down.

Outside, it was still snowing.

‘Was it supposed to be coming right away?’ Linda said on the pavement.

I nodded.

‘As fast as they could make it, they said.’

Even though there was a lot of traffic I saw the taxi from far off. It was coming at quite a speed. I waved and it pulled up beside us. I bent forward, opened the door, let Linda in first and got in after her.

The driver turned.

‘Are we in a hurry?’ he asked.

‘It’s not quite what you think,’ I said. ‘But we’re going to Danderyd.’

He pulled out and drove towards Birger Jarlsgatan. We sat at the back without speaking. I took her hand in mine. Fortunately, she allowed me to do that. The overhead motorway lights flashed through the car like narrow belts. The radio was playing ‘I Won’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me’.

‘Don’t be frightened,’ I said. ‘Everything’s as it should be.’

She didn’t answer. We drove up a gentle incline. There were detached houses between the trees on both sides of the road. The roofs were white with snow, the entrances yellow with light. The occasional orange sledge, the occasional dark expensive car. Then we turned off right and drove under the road we had been on into the hospital, which resembled an enormous box with lots of hatches because of all the lit windows. Piles of snow lay scattered around the buildings.

‘Do you know where it is?’ I asked. ‘I mean the
Förlossning
department?’

He nodded ahead, turned left and pointed to a sign saying
BB Stockholm
.’

‘In there,’ he said.

Another taxi with its engine running was by the entrance as we arrived. The driver pulled in behind it, I passed him my Visa card, got out, held Linda’s hand and helped her onto her feet as another couple hurried through the door. He was carrying a baby seat and a big bag.

I signed, put the receipt with my card in my inside pocket and followed Linda into the building.

The other couple were waiting by the lift. We stood a few metres behind them. I stroked Linda’s back. She was crying.

‘This isn’t how I imagined it would be,’ she said.

‘Everything’s fine,’ I said.

The lift came and we entered after the other couple. The woman suddenly doubled up, tightly squeezing the rail beneath the mirror. The man stood with his hands full looking down at the floor.

They alerted the staff by ringing the bell when we arrived. The nurse who came to meet us exchanged a few words with them first and told us someone would be coming for us, then accompanied them down the corridor.

Linda sat down on a chair. I stood looking down the corridor. The lighting was muted. There was a sign hanging from the ceiling outside every room. Some of them were lit up in red. Whenever a new sign lit up, a signal sounded, also muted, yet with an unmistakably institutional sound. Now and then a nurse appeared, on her way from one room to another. At the end of the corridor a father was rocking a bundle in his hands. He appeared to be singing.

‘Why didn’t you say this was urgent?’ Linda said. ‘I can’t sit here!’

I didn’t answer.

My mind was a blank.

She got up.

‘I’m going in,’ she said.

‘Wait a minute or two,’ I said. ‘They know we’re here.’

It was useless trying to stop her, so when she made a move I followed.

A nurse emerging from the office section came to meet us.

‘Are you being looked after?’ she asked.

‘No,’ Linda said. ‘Someone was supposed to be coming, but they haven’t come yet.’

She peered at Linda over her glasses.

‘I haven’t felt it stir all day,’ Linda said. ‘Nothing at all.’

‘So you’re worried,’ said the nurse.

Linda nodded.

The nurse turned and looked up the corridor.

‘Go into that room,’ she said. ‘It’s free. Then someone will come and see to you at once.’

The room was so alien that all I saw was us two. Every single movement Linda made went right through me.

She took off her coat, hung it over the back of a chair and sat down on the sofa. I walked over to the window and stood there, looking down at the road, at the stream of cars passing. The snow fell as tiny vague shadows outside the window, seeming to be visible only when the snowflakes drifted into the circles of light from the lamps in the car park.

There was a gynaecological chair by one wall. Beside it, several instruments were organised on shelves on top of one other, like in a hi-fi rack. There was a CD player on a shelf on the other side.

‘Did you hear that?’ Linda said.

A low muffled howl came from the other side of the wall.

I turned and looked at her.

‘Don’t cry, Karl Ove,’ she said.

‘I don’t know what else to do,’ I said.

‘It’ll be fine,’ she said.

‘Are
you
comforting
me
now?’ I said. ‘How’s
that
supposed to work?’

She smiled.

Then all went quiet again.

After some minutes there was a knock at the door, a nurse came in, she asked Linda to lie down on the bed and uncover her belly, she listened to it with a stethoscope and smiled.

‘No problems there,’ she said. ‘But we’ll do an ultrasound to make absolutely sure.’

When we left half an hour later Linda was relieved and happy. I was completely drained, and also a little embarrassed that we had bothered them unnecessarily. Judging by all the people going through the doors they had more than enough to deal with already.

Why is it we always believe the worst?

On the other hand, I thought as I lay alongside Linda in bed, with my hand on her belly, in which the baby was now so big it hardly had space to move, the worst could have happened, life could have ceased inside, for that does happen, and as long as the possibility existed, small though it might be, the only correct action was surely to take it seriously and not to allow yourself to be put off by feelings of
embarrassment
? Or fear of bothering other people?

The next day I went back to my office and continued to write the history of Ezekiel, which I had started in order to rework the angel material into a story, as Thure Erik had quite rightly suggested, and not just an essayistic account of them as a phenomenon. Ezekiel’s visions were so grandiose and mysterious, and the Lord’s command that he should eat the scroll so as to turn the words into flesh and blood were absolutely irresistible. At the same time Ezekiel himself became visible in the writing, the insane prophet with the doomsday images, surrounded by everyday lives of misery, with all that entailed of doubt and scepticism and sudden shifts between the interior of the visions, where angels are burned and humans slaughtered, and the exterior, where Ezekiel stands with a brick that is meant to represent Jerusalem and draws shapes that are meant to be armies, bulwarks and ramparts, all at the Lord’s instructions, outside his house, before the eyes of the town’s menfolk. The specific details of the resurrection: ‘You dry bones, hear the words of the Lord!’ Then the Lord God says to these bones, ‘See, I shall put my spirit in you and you shall live again. I shall cover you with sinew and flesh and skin.’ And then when it was done: ‘They arose and stood. It was a vast army.’