The Shadow Girls (12 page)

‘Why couldn’t you have let him in? Gypsies have always been discriminated against in our society.’

‘I decided to restrict it to girls.’

‘Couldn’t you make an exception?’

‘Then I would have had at least ten boxers lining up.’

‘Why boxers?’

‘Törnblom has a boxing club. I can’t tell you anything more. It hurts to talk.’

That night they had sex for the first time in three weeks. The next day, when Andrea had left for work, Humlin immediately opened her diary to check what she had written. He knew she always wrote in the morning.
What is going on with him? He comes so fast I hardly have time to feel anything.

Humiliated, Humlin took his revenge by imagining a night of passion in a Gothenburg hotel with the beautiful and mysterious Tanya. There was more than one reason for him to return to Stensgården and continue this unruly mess of a class that he had not organised so much as landed in the middle of.

He went home. He spent the afternoon trying to find ways of concealing his bruise with self-tanning lotions. Whenever the phone rang he stood over the answering machine and let it pick up. Both Lundin and Leander called. Humlin didn’t take either call, nor did he call either of them back. His face hurt when he smiled.

Shortly after five o’clock he decided to take a walk. When he opened the front door he saw that someone was sitting in the stairwell. It was dark enough that at first he didn’t recognise who it was. Then he saw that it was Tea-Bag.

A DOOR SLAMMED
shut several flights up. Since Humlin didn’t want a curious neighbour to catch him in conversation with an exotic-looking woman, he quickly ushered her into the apartment and shut the door. At the same time he started worrying about the possibility that Andrea would come by and fall into a jealous rage. He led Tea-Bag into the kitchen and asked her if she wanted a cup of tea. She shook her head energetically.

‘I don’t drink tea,’ she said.

Humlin thought about her name and was surprised.

‘Is there anything you would like?’

‘Coffee.’

She sat down on a chair and watched him as he brewed the coffee. Every time he looked over at her she smiled. He thought to himself that she was probably one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. He still couldn’t decide how old she was. She could be anything from seventeen to twenty-five. She was very dark. Her skin was so black it almost looked blue. She had long beautiful braids woven into her hair. She wore no make-up. She was wearing a puffy down coat that she didn’t remove even in the warmth of the kitchen. She had tennis shoes on her feet, with different-coloured laces.

When the coffee was done he sat down across from her. She was sitting where Andrea normally sat. The thought both worried and excited him. He had the constant urge to touch her face, to
feel with the tops of his fingers if she was warm or cold.

‘How did you find out where I live?’

‘It wasn’t very hard.’

‘Did Törnblom tell you?’

She moved her lips but didn’t answer.

There was a sudden sound at the front door. Andrea, Humlin thought with horror. All hell is about to break loose. But no one came in. Later, when Tea-Bag had left, Humlin saw that someone had slid a notice through the mail slot.
Annual check of ventilation systems in rental units.

‘You’ve clearly gone to a great deal of trouble to find me, and you’ve travelled all the way from Gothenburg. You must want something.’

Tea-Bag seemed to hesitate for a moment and pulled at her fingers. Then she said something in a foreign language.

‘Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that,’ he said.

‘I have to speak my own language before I can speak yours. I am unlocking a door.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Once when I was a little girl a monkey cling on my back.’

Humlin waited but she didn’t elaborate.

‘Could you repeat that?’

‘You heard what I said. “Once when I was a little girl a monkey cling on my back.”’

‘Not “cling”. It should be “clung”.’

‘But it didn’t cling. It did something else.’

‘It jumped on you?’

‘No.’

‘It attached itself to you?’

‘No.’

Humlin searched among the verbs at his disposal.

‘Perhaps it just climbed onto your back?’

Tea-Bag smiled, drained her cup and got up.

‘Are you leaving already?’ he asked with surprise.

‘That was all I wanted to know.’

‘What?’

‘That the monkey climbed.’

Suddenly she seemed anxious, but Humlin couldn’t stop himself from asking more questions.

‘You have to understand my curiosity,’ he said. ‘You travel all the way from Gothenburg to ask me about this one word?’

She sat down again, hesitantly, still without unzipping her thick jacket.

‘Is your name really Tea-Bag?’ Humlin asked.

‘Yes. No. Does it matter?’

‘It’s certainly not without significance.’

‘Taita.’

‘Taita. Is that your first or last name?’

‘My sister.’

‘Your sister’s name is Taita?’

‘I don’t have a sister. Please don’t ask any more.’

Humlin didn’t pursue it. Tea-Bag looked into her empty coffee cup and he suddenly sensed that she was hungry.

‘Would you like something to eat?’

‘Yes.’

He got out some slices of bread and some butter, jam and cheese. She threw herself at the food. Humlin said nothing while she ate, but tried to recall what hours Andrea was working this week. The whole time he was expecting her key to sound in the lock. Tea-Bag kept going until all the food was gone.

‘So you live in Gothenburg?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Why did you come here?’

‘To ask you about that word.’

It’s not true, of course, Humlin thought. But I won’t press her any further. The real reason will come out sooner or later.

‘Where do you come from?’

‘Kazakstan.’

Humlin furrowed his brow.

‘Kazakstan?’

‘I am a Kurd.’

‘You don’t look like a Kurd.’

‘My father was from Ghana but my mother was a Kurd.’

‘Are they dead?’

‘My father is in prison, and my mother is gone.’

‘What do you mean “gone”?’

‘She went into a container and disappeared.’

‘She did what? She entered a container?’

‘Maybe it was a temple. I don’t remember.’

Humlin tried to interpret her strange answers, to get the different pieces to hang together, but he couldn’t make any sense of it.

‘Are you here as a refugee?’

‘I want to live here with you,’ she said.

Humlin jumped.

‘You can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘You just can’t.’

‘I can sleep on the stairs.’

‘That won’t work. Why can’t you keep living in Gothenburg? I thought you had friends there. Leyla is your friend.’

‘I don’t know anyone called Leyla.’

‘Of course you do. She was the one who took you to the boxing club that night.’

‘No one took me. I went alone.’

Her smile died away. Humlin was starting to feel uncomfortable. She couldn’t have travelled all the way to Stockholm just to ask him about a Swedish word. He found no connection in what she had told him, between her words and the big smile that came and went on her face like waves breaking on the shore.

‘What are you thinking about?’ he asked.

‘I’m thinking about the boat that sank. Everyone who drowned. And my father who sat on the roof of our hut and wouldn’t come down.’

‘Is that hut in Ghana?’

‘In Togo.’

‘Togo? I thought you were from Ghana?’

‘I come from Nigeria. But that is a secret. The river brought us cold and clear water from the mountains. One day a monkey climbed onto my back.’

Humlin was starting to wonder if the girl was sane.

‘What else did this monkey do, apart from climb onto your back?’

‘It disappeared.’

‘And then?’

‘Isn’t that enough?’

‘Probably. But I don’t understand the significance of this monkey.’

‘Are you stupid?’

Humlin looked narrowly at her. No little African hussy, however beautiful, was going to sit in his kitchen and tell him he was stupid.

‘Why did you come here?’ he asked.

‘I want to live here.’

‘You can’t. I don’t know who you are or what you do. I can’t have any Tom, Dick or Harry moving in here.’

‘I’m a refugee.’

‘I hope you’ve been well treated by the authorities.’

‘No one knows that I am here.’

Humlin looked back at her in silence.

‘Are you here illegally?’ he asked finally.

She got up without answering and left the kitchen. Humlin expected to hear the front door slam shut. Then he wondered if she had locked herself in the bathroom. But everything was quiet. Too quiet, he thought, getting up. Maybe she was looking for things to steal. He walked into the living room, it was empty but the bathroom door was ajar. He continued on into the study but she wasn’t there either. Then he opened the door to the bedroom.

She had finally taken off her puffy coat. It lay on the floor with the rest of her clothes. Her head looked very dark against the white pillow. She was on Andrea’s side of the bed. Humlin felt a chill. If Andrea came home at this moment there was no way he could make her believe that he had had nothing to do with the fact that an illegal alien now lay in his bed. On her side.

Humlin saw scandalous newspaper headlines in his mind. First he had stroked an immigrant girl’s cheek and been knocked out. If Tea-Bag started screeching that he had forced her into his bed then all the country’s journalists would come after him like a pack of wolves and rip him to shreds. He walked over to her. She lay with her eyes closed.

‘What do you think you’re doing? You can’t lie in my bed! And you’re lying on Andrea’s side. What do you think she’s going to say about that?’

There was no answer. He repeated his question and noticed that he was starting to sweat. Andrea could appear at any moment. Her work schedule was always changing. He grabbed Tea-Bag’s shoulder and shook it. No reaction. He wondered if it was even possible to fall asleep as soon as one put one’s head down on the pillow. But she didn’t seem to be trying to trick him, she had actually fallen asleep. He shook her harder. Irritated, without waking up, she threw out her arm and hit the side of his face that Haiman had earlier visited with his fist.

The phone rang. Humlin flinched as if he had received an electric shock. He ran into the living room and answered it. It was Andrea.

‘Why are you out of breath?’ she asked.

‘I’m not out of breath. Where are you?’

‘I just wanted to tell you I’m going to a lecture tonight.’

‘What lecture? How long is it?’

‘Why do you want to know how long it is?’

‘I want to know when you’re going to come. If you’re coming. I don’t like to be here all alone, you know that.’

‘I don’t know anything of the sort. I’m going to a reading by some young poets. You should be going too. I’m hoping to get inspiration for the book I’m writing.’

‘I don’t want you to write a book about us.’

‘I’ll be coming when it’s over.’

‘And when is that?’

‘How should I know?’

Humlin heard that she was starting to get suspicious.

‘I thought maybe we could eat together,’ he said. ‘If I know when you’re coming I’ll have dinner ready.’

‘Not before nine.’

Humlin breathed a sigh of relief. That gave him three hours to get Tea-Bag out of the apartment. He didn’t like Andrea listening to the work of other poets, but for once his young rivals had actually helped him out. He hung up and returned to the bedroom.

She still refused to wake up when he shook her. He sat down on the edge of the bed and tried to understand what was happening. Who was she and why had she come here? What was the monkey she had talked about? He looked down at her puffy coat and her trousers on the floor. He had a sudden impulse to lift the covers and see if she was naked underneath them, but resisted.

He searched all her pockets. There were no keys or money. It was a mystery to him that anyone could get by without keys or money. He found a little plastic sleeve in the inside pocket of her coat. It contained a Sudanese passport in the name of Florence Kanimane, with a photograph of Tea-Bag. Humlin flipped through it but did not find any stamps or visas. Not even for Sweden. But she had talked of Ghana and Togo. And Kazakstan. Hadn’t she claimed to be a Kurd?

The only other thing he found in the passport was a dried insect – large and rather frightening – as well as a pressed yellow flower. The flower looked like a heart, a compressed heart. He thought about the heart that Tanya had drawn. There was also a black-and-white photo in the plastic sleeve, showing an African family with a mother, father and six children. The picture had been taken outside with a hut in the background. There were no shadows so the sun must have been very high at the time. The
picture was a bit blurry and even with good lighting Humlin could not tell if one of the children was Tea-Bag. Or Taita. Or Florence, as the name she apparently also went by.

The plastic sleeve also contained a scrap of paper on which someone had written ‘Sweden’ and the name ‘Per’. There was nothing else. When he held the scrap of paper up to the light he saw that it had a watermark that said ‘Madrid’. He frowned. Who was she, this woman who had asked him a question in Mölndal, then turned up on his doorstep and ended up in his bed?

He searched her clothes again but didn’t find anything except sand. What I have in my hands is a story, he thought. A girl who most probably has entered Sweden illegally and who talks about a monkey, a girl whose name I can’t be sure of and who has neither money nor keys. He sat down closer to her. She was sleeping deeply, peacefully. He carefully brushed her cheek with his fingers. She was very warm. He looked at the time. It was ten to six. He could let her sleep another hour, then he had to get her up and out of the apartment.

The phone rang. He walked out into the living room and listened to the answering machine. The caller was Viktor Leander. ‘I’m just calling to see what you’re up to. We should get together. Call me, or better yet, pick up if you’re there. I think you are.’