“Hold me,” she said quietly, this time with better control over her voice.
He reached out his hand and stroked her wet hair.
“We’ll manage this,” he said.
“You knew,” she murmured.
Sammy nodded.
“Morgansson and I were there, you know.”
He could not deny that he had seen the package of condoms, the dark hairs, and the semen stains in Brant’s bed, even though it increased her torment that he had known, while she only sensed that something was very wrong.
“But you didn’t say anything! What a fool I am!”
“Lie down,” said Sammy, with a touch of irritation in his voice, because while he knew that treachery was the worst blow a person in love could be subjected to, he could not help feeling that her self-pity was tiresome.
“I know,” she said. “It’s pitiful, but I was really in love. For the first time since Edvard, and that feels like a hundred years ago.”
There was desperation in her voice, but Sammy was glad that she was talking at all. For a time he feared she would sink into a trance-like state, which would require different measures than he could contribute.
“Do you want to call anyone? Your friend, what’s her name? Görel?”
“No, not her,” said Ann.
She closed her eyes; he continued stroking her hair. It was as if the two of them were calming each other. From Erik’s room plinging and clamor was heard from the computer.
“Take a few days off. I know it sounds silly, but you need to rest. You’ll have more energy, and things will look different.”
“I can’t,” said Ann.
“You can’t go on like this, with this tension, and you know it too. You’ll break down.”
“Work is the only thing I have outside these walls,” Ann replied, opening her eyes.
“That’s what’s wrong.”
“I’ve tried,” Ann sobbed.
“I know,” said Sammy. “I know you’ve struggled. But have you done it in the right way, on the right grounds, and with the right means?”
Instead of answering she raised herself up on her forearms and started telling about the experience of finding Klara Lovisa, about how at the edge of the pit she promised Klara Lovisa to find her murderer.
“We shouldn’t make those kinds of promises,” said Sammy. “That’s the sort of thing that hollows us out.”
Ann shook her head and sank back on the couch, closed her eyes, and grimaced in pain.
“Should I go get some pizza?” Sammy asked after a while.
Ann opened her eyes in confusion. She looked dazed and was barely able to keep her eyes on him. Sammy realized that for a few seconds she had been somewhere else.
“I’ll take Erik and get some pizzas, okay? We have to get a little food in our stomachs. I’ll call home and say-”
“Not a word about me!”
“I’m working late,” he said, smiling. “Angelika will understand.”
She observed him thoughtfully a moment before her gaze fluttered away, and he realized that she was trying to imagine a man she could call, a man who would understand.
Erik did not go with Sammy to the pizza parlor, but instead stayed in front of his computer. He did not seem to understand how far down his mother had fallen into the black hole at whose edge she had tottered for so long.
Or else he did understand, thought Sammy, in that instinctive way children have. Maybe he had seen the tottering, seen her torment, and now he was silently rallying by her side, and by not showing any visible worry he was safeguarding their day-to-day life, the fixed points that Ann could connect to. If she lost her footing, he would stand steady.
They were eating at the kitchen table. Sammy asked questions about what Erik thought about starting school in August. Erik explained that he already knew all the letters and could read, and that he was not a bit nervous.
Sammy observed Ann. She cut up her pizza with slow movements and ate slowly. But at least she’s eating, he thought, and wondered what he would do. He had called home and explained the situation, and that he did not want to leave Ann alone. He understood that she did not want to contact anyone who might come and keep her company. Ann had always been careful to show a controlled exterior. She was the one who could manage everything-work, Erik, and being single-without cracks. It was bad enough that at the preschool they had seen her fall apart.
That she was extremely bad at talking about herself, her needs and desires, Sammy believed was one reason for her problems. He had never heard her talk about dreams and plans for the future, never about desire and men, at least not more than in brief, self-ironic comments that she nonchalantly threw out in passing. But he had seen through her for years. Behind the self-sufficient, cocky surface, tumult reigned. Alarm bells were ringing inside Ann Lindell.
She never invited anyone over, never flirted, seldom took any initiative to break her isolation. Instead she sat at home, swilled wine, and gnawed on the bones of loneliness. He knew that Olofsson had discussed her drinking habits with her, most likely very cautiously in his low-key way, careful not to criticize her. He had also discussed the issue with Sammy in confidence, and had been worried and irresolute. That was two or three years ago, when Ann’s life appeared to be falling apart, when she showed up hollow-eyed and uninspired almost every morning.
Ann put down her knife and fork after forcing down half a pizza and now sat and observed Erik putting away the last pieces of his. It was slow going, but he seemed to be making an effort not to leave a single crumb on his plate.
“Well done,” said Sammy.
Erik gave him a smile. Sammy realized how like his mother he was, that slightly wry smile and momentary expression of mockery in his eyes, a moment that in Ann’s case could light up the darkest corners, and that made people smile back. Sammy could not remember when he had last seen that in her face.
But Erik’s smile made him remember what it was like when Ann came to the unit. Then she shone; she was eager and curious, she loved life, and could not get enough. The contrast to the Ann of the last few years was suddenly so clear. Life had truly treated her roughly. Sammy took a deep breath to conceal his emotion, got up, and started clearing the table. He turned his back to them, moved by how things were for all of them, how fragile life was, how those few seconds of the deepest warmth and love in life so easily and so often were crossed by pain and desperate fumbling.
He scraped off the plates and rinsed them, to break the silence with rattling and the rushing of water, painfully aware that after all it was these moments of connection and perceived love that were the only things that could save a person, that made you a person. All the rest was struggle. All talk about work satisfaction was bullshit, if the other person wasn’t there. At arm’s length or on the other side of the ocean made no difference, if only the other person was there. But even as he was thinking that, it felt like a simplification, almost a lie.
“Maybe love is all” he had heard a choir sing once, at Culture Night many years ago. He and Angelika were on the square listening in a downpour. Then, even though Angelika took his hand and squeezed it, the words felt false, but the phrase had taken hold in his mind. Now he didn’t know what to think. Every person was the designer of his own life. There was no solution that suited everyone. But was love really all?
Ann’s transformation was a deconstruction. She was slowly but surely collapsing; she struggled against it but the collapse continued. The moments of joy, eagerness, and curiosity had been replaced by duty; only if she solved the murder of Klara Lovisa would her existence be justified, but Sammy knew from his own experience that the satisfaction was shallow; only if she was able to give Erik love and care, bring him up to be a well-adjusted person, then her life would be meaningful, but Sammy sensed that the task in itself was no guarantee that she herself would feel like a whole person. There were many things troubling her.