“I already went through my damned test. I can’t deal with all this crap.” She hung up.
The string of attempts with pills, razor blades, and ropes started after that. She would call me after every attempt. I took her to the hospital the first few times. After making sure she didn’t have any life-threatening injuries (and she never did), they sent her home with a priest in tow. Eventually, Rebecka wouldn’t call me until a day or so after she’d done something. Then I’d visit to clean up the mess while she hid in her bed.
The Lord tells us we must have patience with our fellow men, especially those who are being tested. Rebecka was being tested. Around the time when I had just met her, she had been raped and tortured by her husband, rest his soul. She had never recovered.
“People who hurt others are the ones with the best imagination,” Rebecka said.
We were walking along the quay from Old Town to Slussen, watching the commuter boats trudge across Lake Mälaren. It was November. There were no tourists waiting for the boats this time of year, just some pensioners and a kindergarten group in bright snowsuits. I didn’t mind the cold, but Rebecka was bundled up. We each had a cup of coffee, Rebecka occasionally pulling down her scarf from her face to take a sip. I couldn’t help but look at her scarred lips as she did so.
“I don’t follow,” I said.
“Would you get the idea to cut a pregnant woman open with a breadknife and take the baby out?” She was talking through her scarf again, voice muffled.
I shuddered. “Of course not.”
“Or poke someone’s eyes out with a paper clip?”
“Come off it.”
“Three days, Sara.”
Of course. This was what she was on about. Karl.
“He used everything he could get his hands on.”
“I know, Becks. You’ve told me everything.”
She went on as if I hadn’t said anything. “You couldn’t imagine the things he came up with, not in your worst nightmares. Get it? And you know something else?”
“What?” I said, although I knew what she was going to say.
“How could He let it go on for three days before He decided to do something about it?”
“He did deal with him,” I said, as I usually did.
“Yeah, after three days. Why did He wait so long?”
“I don’t know.”
We were quiet for a while, sipping coffee.
“And I’m still here,” Rebecka said. “It’s like I’m being punished too.”
“I don’t think you are,” I said. “You’re not being punished. He doesn’t do that. Like I said before, maybe it’s a test.”
We went through the motions like that, until I said I had to go home and dropped her off at Slussen, where she would take the subway.
She didn’t take the subway. She tried to throw herself in front of it. It was in all the morning papers: Rebecka jumped from the end of the platform, so that the train would hit her at full speed. The driver later told reporters that he’d had a sudden impulse to brake before he was supposed to. The train had stopped a meter from where Rebecka was lying on the tracks.
“Maybe now you’ll believe me when I tell you,” she said across the kitchen table the following day. “Listen, I’m ashamed for all the times you’ve had to come and clean me up.”
“It’s all right,” I said.
“No, it’s not. I know you think I’m a coward who’s afraid to really go ahead and kill myself. I know you wish I could make up my mind and either die or start living again.”
I couldn’t meet her eyes then.
“It’s always been for real,” she said. “It really has. I can’t sleep through a single night without waking up because Karl is there. He’s standing at the foot of the bed, and I know he’s about to do all those things to me. I want it to stop. I want to sleep.” She looked at me. “Every time I went for my arms with the razor they stopped bleeding. Every time I took pills and alcohol I started throwing up. I never once stuck my fingers down my throat. I promise. I just started throwing up. And if I didn’t, absolutely nothing would happen even though I should be passing out.”
“So what are you saying?” I said.
“It’s getting worse. I don’t even get injured anymore. I swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills yesterday, you know?”
“And…?”
“They came out the other end this morning. Whole. The Lord is fucking with me.”
“Don’t swear,” I said.
“I’m telling you. The Lord is fucking with me. I hate Him. He won’t take the nightmares away. Or the scars, all the scars. But He won’t let me kill myself either. It’s like He wants me to suffer.”
“Rebecka, we’ve been through this one before.”
“Would you stop taking His side all the time?” she shouted. “I’m your best friend!”
“Rebecka,” I said.
“I know what you’re going to say. He’s not my nanny.”
“That wasn’t what I was going to say.”
“If He thinks I’m supposed to deal with this myself, He could have just not come back in the first place. That way I would have known what to do. But now, this is the way things are. And I really don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
“Me neither,” I said.
The next time Rebecka called it was early morning.
“You have to come over,” she said. “We have to talk.”
I took the bike over to her apartment, expecting to see another scene of a failed suicide attempt. Her face was pale under the scarring when she opened the door.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” I said. “I’ve taken the day off.”
She let me in. There wasn’t anything on her or in the apartment to indicate she had done anything to herself, just the usual mess. I sat down by the kitchen table while she poured tea. The blue tablecloth was crusted with cup rings. I traced them with a finger.
“You had me worried,” I said. “What’s going on?”
“I’ve realized what I have to do.” She put a steaming cup in front of me and sat down in the opposite chair. A smoky Lapsang smell wafted up from the cup. Rebecka rested her elbows on the table and leaned towards me.
“I’m serious about not coping anymore,” she said. Her tone was matter-of-fact. “I want to die, Sara.”
“I don’t want you to,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
“I really don’t want you to.”
“Well, it’s not for you to decide anyway.” She took a sip from her cup. I didn’t know what to say, so I drank my tea. It was sweetened with too much honey.
“I suppose you’re going to tell me,” I said eventually.
“The Lord isn’t going to do anything,” Rebecka said. “I know that now.”
There were white dregs at the bottom of my cup.
“Rebecka, what did you put in my tea?” I said.
Her face was set, almost serene. “I’m going to make Him listen,” she replied. “I’m going to do something he can’t ignore.”
I was naked when I woke up in her bed. My wrists and ankles were tied to the bedposts. Rebecka was sitting on a chair beside me, a toolbox at her feet.
“I love you,” I said.
“I know,” she said.
Herr Cederberg
Herr Cederberg preferred leaving the office to have lunch outside. He would sit on a bench next to the fountain on Mariatorget, reading the newspaper with a sandwich or two, especially now that the weather was nice. It was June, and the flowerbeds were full of giddy insects that every now and then buzzed over to Herr Cederberg to make sure he wasn’t a flower. Other office workers populated the adjacent benches with their lunch boxes, and some even stretched out on the lawns, drinking the first summer sun like pale lizards.
Herr Cederberg was vaguely reading an article on the national economy when feet crunched by on the gravel, and a girl’s voice mumbled,