Let the Old Dreams Die (23 page)

‘That’s what was left. Of her.’

There was nothing more to say. As I stood in the hallway putting on my coat, Matte came up to me with the photograph in his hand.

‘Can I keep this?’

I looked at the photograph, at Matte. In spite of everything, it was the only souvenir I had of that particular year, and as I said: I’m a collector. Matte was looking intently at me, and I gazed into two deep shafts.

‘Please?’

I nodded. Not really because I wanted to be kind, but because I just wanted to get out of there. I nodded and held out my hand to
say goodbye. Matte clasped the photograph to his heart with his left hand, held out his right. We said goodbye.

When I got out onto the street I stood for a long time looking up at Matte’s window. One apartment among twenty-four others in the same block, one apartment block among several others. A space with temporary objects arranged in it. A shudder passed through my body and I hurried off towards the warmth and movement of the subway.

On the platform the cold fluorescent light poured down on a man here, a woman there, another man over there, waiting with his hands pushed deep in his pockets. The men were standing still, the woman walking the short distance back and forth, back and forth.

The train arrived. Six blue carriages pulled in alongside the platform. Stopped.

The people inside the carriages were gazing into space or looking down at their newspapers or out into the blackness beyond the window. No one was moving.

Mia Ajvide

Anna and Josef really loved each other. Eight years they had been together, and all the indications were that things would stay that way until death parted them. If they had to be apart for a day or more because of work or other circumstances, they both had the feeling they were in the wrong place. Life became insubstantial, unreal.

They had both grown up in Stockholm, and before they met they had each had quite an intense social life—bars, clubs, short-term relationships. Two years into their own relationship they went through their address books. Half the names they couldn’t even put a face to; nine out of every ten phone numbers were redundant. They wrote the important ones in a new book and threw away the old ones.

In November the following year Josef’s father had a heart attack
when he jumped into the sea from the jetty after a sauna. When the grief had stopped sprawling and stabbing and settled in his chest, his father’s summer cottage, made warm and cosy for winter use, was waiting there like an opportunity. No loans, no rent.

Most of what they needed they found in each other, so why would they need Stockholm? And in any case, Sågviken was only a hundred kilometres from the capital if they were in the mood for a change.

They had a farewell party, inviting the remaining ten per cent of the names in their address book, said
You must come and see us
and
I mean it’s not as if we’re moving to a different part of the world
, in spite of the fact that they knew that was exactly what they were doing.

After a couple of years, things were going well. Josef, who was a qualified childcare worker, had found a job at a nursery in Norrtälje, and Anna had converted the garage into a studio where she worked during the day. One week she painted motifs from the archipelago on driftwood which she could sell to summer visitors, the next she painted pictures she couldn’t sell to anyone, as she put it herself.

In the evenings they read aloud to each other, drank wine. Watched TV. Or sat and talked. They rarely had visitors, but when it did happen they thought it was great when the visitors arrived and lovely when they left.

Naturally they quarrelled and had their darker moments. Like when they were due to attend a family party at Anna’s parents’ house. Josef took himself off in his boat with his fishing rod, returning half an hour after the time they had planned to leave. When he got in the car he stank of fish guts. They sat in silence for fifty kilometres. Anna made a point of pushing the old Toyota to a hundred and forty on the motorway; it rattled and roared as if they were inside a tumble dryer. Then they ran out of petrol. Anna had been so tense she had forgotten to fill up.

They sat there at the side of the road with their arms tightly folded. Neither of them wanted to start, because once they did start it was going to take a long time. Anna’s family, Josef’s reluctance. How he hated feeling forced into things. How she hated having to force him. And so on. Both of them were very angry: messy black clouds in their heads. Both of them were thinking:
I want a divorce. This isn’t how it should be
. Neither of them meant it. Everything was bloody awful and really difficult, but this was where they were meant to be. They would bicker over it all and sort things out yet again. There was no alternative.

They started quarrelling as they set off to fetch some petrol, carried on afterwards. Fifty kilometres, a hundred kilometres. Outside Norrköping came the first laughter. In Linköping they bought new trousers for Josef. They arrived at the party three hours late, and as usual everybody commented on how happy they seemed together. Anna said seriously, ‘It’s because we’re both on the same antidepressants,’ and only Josef laughed.

Their love is so big and strong, but there is still room to fear two things: the child and death.

Sometimes they lie in bed, gazing into each other’s eyes and thinking:
My happiness is complete. I want things to stay just like this forever.
They haven’t just fallen in love, they know what it’s all about. ‘I want things to stay like this’ pretty much sums it up: a life filled with hard work, sometimes boring, sometimes joyous. And they lie there, four eyes fixed on each other, sounding each other’s depths, and they try to think:
This moment is eternity. This moment is forever.

But we grow older, things change. A time will come when illness and frailty ravage their bodies. Senility, weakness, teeth falling out, a wheelchair ramp up the porch. Perhaps then they will look back on their happy life and feel contented.

But that isn’t what they want! No! They want what they have
now
to last forever! It’s not fair that love should be subject to the same limitations as our frail bodies. That it should wither and die along with our flesh.

Of course some people believe in heaven. But not Anna and Josef. Unfortunately.

And The Child? It must have capital letters, it has assumed such proportions. At family parties everyone asks, ‘Don’t you think it’s getting time? I mean, everything’s going so well for you, and Josef is so good with children, and you’ll be such a wonderful mother, Anna.’

Everything seems to tend in its favour. But they’re afraid.

The greatest cathedrals are finely balanced. Move a few stones from the foundations of the Globe Arena, and it will roll away. Maybe. You never know. And isn’t the basic premise of love a mutual freedom? The fact that you
can
leave?

Neither of them wants to leave, not for all the tea in China, but the possibility should be there. The idea that you choose each other, not because you have to and not because you have children or a house to consider, but because that’s what you want, every day.

But a child. A child…

They can’t decide, so they allow chance, fate to determine what happens; their only form of contraception is to make love during Anna’s safe periods. If it happens anyway, well, it happens. To tell the truth, they’re not all that careful about the dates either.

And it does happen.

Anna misses a period, Josef picks up a pregnancy test on the way home from work. Anna pees on the stick, they put it on the kitchen table and stand there for three minutes, hugging each other, eyes closed. The world all around them is silent, holding its breath.

When they look there is a pale blue line showing: the child’s first sign of life.

They neither laugh nor cry. The little line fills them with trepidation, leaves them dumbstruck. When one of them finally speaks, it’s Anna who says in a fake falsetto voice, ‘I want ice cream!’

Josef laughs. They take a litre out of the freezer, put it on the table next to the pregnancy test, get two spoons and eat the whole lot. His tongue stiff with cold, Josef asks, ‘How does it feel?’

‘It feels good. How about you?’

‘Yes. Good. It’ll be quite something.’

‘Yes. Probably.’

She licks ice cream off his lips and carries on into his mouth. This is going to be good. They’ll just be happy in a slightly different way. Hand in hand they go to bed, despite the fact that it’s Anna’s unsafe period. After all, it doesn’t matter anymore.

A week went by. It would be an exaggeration to say that they drifted apart, but they were lost in their own thoughts. Perhaps it’s as Pascal says: we are incapable of living in the present, it’s only the past and the future that have the capacity to occupy our minds.

The future had changed shape. It took a while to get used to the idea. Anna painted gulls flying over salt-spattered cliffs, even though it was the wrong week. She had a lot to think about, and she could paint the gulls on autopilot, as it were. It was the end of September now, and most of her stock had been sold at the markets over the summer.

She stopped with the brush poised over the crest of a wave just as she was about to dab it with flake white to make the surf. Next summer. Would they be struggling around the markets with…a buggy? Reins? Could they carry on living like this? How much would they need to change?

Josef finished work early and cycled home from the bus stop because the car was out of action. Something to do with the carburettor. After they’d eaten he set off in the boat with his fishing rod
to catch a few autumn perch. Anna stood at the kitchen window watching him go, and a shiver of apprehension that began in her womb fluttered through her body. The thought of never seeing him again. Bravely she went back to her seagulls, spent a couple of hours applying colour.

When she came out of the garage the wind had got up, and dusk fell quickly. Josef hadn’t come home. She went down to the jetty, gazing out across the dirty grey water. After a quarter of an hour she was frozen stiff.

She went inside and made herself a cup of coffee, sat down by the kitchen window.

Come on Josef, don’t do this…

But he didn’t come. When it was so dark that she could no longer see the jetty she rang the emergency services and was put through to the coastguard. The receiver shook in her hand as she spoke to a man on a motor launch at Refsnäs jetty, via a crackling mobile link.

‘Do you have any idea what area he might be in?’

‘Yes, roughly. It’s by…hang on…let me just…’

The names of the islands around the area where Josef usually fished had disappeared. She stood up to fetch the chart and her legs gave way. Her heart was pounding so much she could hardly breathe. On all fours she crawled to the bookcase, grabbed the chart and opened it out.

There were holes in the cover along the folds, and the map was stained or worn in those places. She tried to focus, but the letters were crawling like maggots over the grey vomit of the archipelago. He was out there somewhere. A little voice called, ‘Hello, are you there?’ from the receiver. She swallowed, rubbed her eyes and picked it up.

‘I think there are some small islands east, no north of Gisslingö where he usually…the map’s torn…Josef.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Josef. That’s his name.’

‘Right. So somewhere around Fjärdskäret, then?’

She looked at the map for confirmation. It was illegible, worn in that particular area. She could see her Josef there, floating in the black waves in a place that didn’t exist, a hole in the world. She started to cry. On the other end of the line she heard an engine start up.

‘Don’t worry. I’m sure he’s just got some mechanical problem with the boat. We’ll go out and take a look.’

‘Thank you. He’s…he’s going to be a father.’

A pause. A small sigh. Then: ‘We’ll be in touch as soon as we know anything.’

She gave them her number and hung up. In the silence that small sigh grew into an ominous, cold wind. She wrapped a blanket around her, leaned her forehead against the windowpane and stared out into the darkness. She was alone.

After a few minutes her legs started to move. She tried doing the washing-up to keep calm, but it was impossible. She walked around and around the house, but found no peace anywhere.

They must be there by now. They’ll be searching now.

Searchlights sweeping across the surface of the water. Her legs kept on walking and walking. In the end she understood what they wanted: they wanted to go down to the jetty, position themselves right at the very end on the border between land and sea and wait there as women have waited for their men to come home from the sea for thousands of years. It was the only thing to do. But she lived in the twenty-first century, and her place was by the telephone.

They would get a mobile. When Josef got home they would get a mobile phone at long last, and he could take it with him when he went out. Who was it who hadn’t wanted a mobile? It was Anna. If he’d had a mobile now…it was all her fault.

After two hours without any news, a black madness began to creep up on her. She fell to her knees on the kitchen floor with the blanket over her, joined her hands together, pressed them to her forehead and mumbled, ‘Dear Lord, please let him come back. You can have anything you want. Anything. take the house, all my things, take…yes, take my child. I don’t want it. You can have it, if you’ll just let Josef come back. As long as I can spend my life with Josef.
Take it now.
’

The telephone rang.

She flung off the blanket, hurled herself at the phone. Her hands were sweaty from the warmth of her cocoon, and at first she couldn’t grasp the receiver. Even before it reached her ear she could hear the crackling. Her heart expanded, filling her chest.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello, Magnus Jansson from the coastguard here. We’ve got him. He’s alive.’