Calisto let out a laugh.
— What I think is that I have forgotten how to do this, he said. I should probably see someone about it.
— You can pay my taxi back to town.
— That goes without saying. But you’ll have to wait until they start driving again, until the roads are cleared.
A little while later we were sitting in front of the fire. Calisto had opened a bottle of red wine and made a salad, which we ate straight from the bowl. We had both showered and I had borrowed a pajama shirt that reached down to my feet.
Calisto soon fell asleep. His large body lay there, completely knocked out on the sheepskin rug. I imagined standing up and kicking him in the gut. A hard, strong kick. My foot with its cuts and wounds would disappear into Calisto’s fat. Then he would open his eyes and I would lift my leg and plant my heel right in his face and at the same time I would scream with anger, loud and clear, the scream echoing between the white walls. I knew that if I didn’t deal with my need to hurt him, it would remain inside me, sour and dark, and I wouldn’t be able to get rid of it once I was home again.
Then I realized there was a much better way to hurt Calisto. I got up quietly so I wouldn’t wake him and walked over to his study. I turned the light on: there it was, the manuscript. Lying there like the crown jewel of the house. Standing in Calisto’s study with this author’s manuscript in front of me was like standing in the middle of Calisto’s heart, right before the blood supply, with a pair of tongs in my hand. I laughed quietly. I collected the two piles and carried the stack out into the living room. The fire had almost gone out and I had to blow on it to get it crackling again. Then I burned the pages. One after another I let them float down into the flames. I started at the back, in case Calisto woke up and tried to grab what was left. The fire got going again, as if its appetite had been awakened. I threw the sheets of paper on the fire until the manuscript was completely destroyed and there were only embers left, fully aglow among the ashes. Calisto was lying behind me, his belly up in the air like a mound, his mouth half open, saliva dripping down onto the floor. Now we’re even, I thought. Now everything is in balance and I can go back to my windowless hotel.
I laid down beside Calisto and fell asleep almost immediately. A few hours later I felt him move and woke up. He sat up; then he laid down again behind me and pulled me in. I was sort of enveloped in Calisto. I smelled his scent and felt his warm breath on my neck.
— You wanted me without money, he whispered behind me. It’s fucking unbelievable. And I hurt you. Can you forgive me?
— It’s all in the past, I said.
I had never slept with anyone like I did with Calisto that night. I woke up now and then, heard the snow whip against the windows. The whole time he had his arm around me and breathed down my neck. Even when he was asleep his arm held me tightly.
At seven I woke from a new sound, snapping and reverberating; a hazy light filled the room.
— It’s the ice breaking, Calisto whispered behind me.
Before my eyes I saw long, dark cracks that started out at sea and quickly ran through the ice to the shore. Here and there large pools of black water opened up. I put my hand over Calisto’s and went back to sleep.
When I woke again it was ten o’clock and the pendulum clock twanged throughout the house. Calisto stood before me — his face was as black as night.
— Where is the manuscript? he said through his teeth.
— What manuscript?
— I was going to the bathroom and saw that the light was on in the study. I went in and saw that it was gone. Now tell me where it is, do you hear me? You tell me where the author’s manuscript is!
— I burned it, I said, as revenge for the glass.
Calisto stared at me. His eyes were bloodshot and the hair that hung down on his forehead looked wet.
— What did you just say? he asked, his voice sounding faint. You said you...?
— Yes, I burned it. It’s gone.
— You goddamn... Are you out of your mind?
I got up without meeting his gaze. He stood in front of me and breathed heavily.
— Calm down, I said. You could have a heart attack.
— You are completely fucking crazy. Completely...
I raised my hand.
— That’s enough. I get it. I’m leaving.
Calisto slowly sat down on a chair and put his face in his hands.
— The author is going to hate me, he said.
— I really don’t give a shit. And if you want to know my opinion, he wanted to get rid of it. Or else he wouldn’t have given his only copy to a stranger. He might not see it that way now, but as time goes by he might come to this realization.
— But what about me? he said, resigned. My reading.
I didn’t feel like standing there sharing my theories with Calisto, but I thought to myself that as far as his own reading went, I couldn’t imagine there was as much at stake as he thought. If he had read the whole thing without being disappointed he would have just thought he understood something no one else understood. That would have given him a sense of superiority, which in time would have made him even lonelier than he already was. I know something about loneliness: it’s not pretty. Calisto in this huge house; Calisto sitting in his tidy study reading manuscripts; Calisto who has to pay for sex; Calisto who laboriously moves his own weight around the house. Calisto being one of the only defective people in this cold, perfect city. And then me, in the middle of all this, just as lonely and defective as he was, but in a completely different way.
I got dressed. Calisto stood watching me the whole time, and when I went to the kitchen to have a glass of water he followed me. I put my shoes on, took my bag, realized I wouldn’t be getting money for the cab, but didn’t care; I was sure there would be bus stops, even in a place like this. I opened the door and walked out onto the front steps. The wind had subsided and the trees surrounding the house stood tall and straight. This is when he pushes me out and slams the door shut, I thought, but Calisto didn’t.
Kim
by Torbjörn Elensky
Translated by Rika Lesser
Gamla stan
The phone in my pocket was silent. Cold and dead. I sat on the Skeppsbron wharf while the summer night smiled at me with scorn. A cold, white twilight sun in a clear sky — scrubbed clean, as if to wipe out all traces of a crime that had been committed. I took the phone out of my pocket and flung it straight into the light, without once checking if a new message or missed call had come. I threw hard, right toward the sun, as if I were trying to hit it. With a miserable little splash, a disappointing plop, it fell into the water, while gulls circled and squawked with disappointment that it wasn’t something edible.
You’d think that the warmth and the sun that shines almost all night in summer would make everything lighter, warmer, milder. But no. This cold summer night’s light over Skeppsbron’s old façades and down between the alleys in Old Town makes nothing better. It only makes the shadows denser and the secrets of the alleys deeper. It’s probably meaningless to say, but I wanted to do a good deed. I wanted to help. Maybe I did? Maybe the truth is that there’s no difference between good and evil, help and harm; in a cold cosmos it makes no difference what we do to one another. Against one another. Yet it does. Still. It must. Allow me, in peace and quiet, to tell you how I experienced it all from the beginning.
For me, Old Town is a part of the city which, with every passing year, loses a bit more of its magic. More and more Västerlånggatan is becoming a tourist trap that could just as well be some random street in Mallorca. The old shops, the musty bookstores, and the shabby little cafés have all been replaced by big clean places, where hardly any Stockholmers sit, not least because of the prices. But you can still manage to find alleyways where time has stood still, and the magic from earlier times lingers.