But who wouldn’t choose love, if the choice were between it and violence?
Can you hear me, Malin?
This is Sofia Fredén.
My mum and dad are sad, so sad, their sadness can never even be replaced by longing. Unless it can, if only time is allowed to pass? Now they’re sitting on the sofa in their flat in Mjölby. The television is on but they can’t see what’s on the screen.
Their eyes are full of tears.
And they’re crying for me, Malin.
You can do so much, Malin.
You can make their tears stop. Or at least take a different path.
Just take a brief moment to catch your breath before pressing on.
Tove is holding her dad’s hand, the pressure in her ears is giving her a headache as, metre by metre, the plane descends towards the runway, the lights of the houses in the forests outside the windows are growing, a strip of brightness is still lingering on the horizon and Tove wonders if the world is disappearing over there, but knows that it carries on for an eternity, that life on this planet is a vast cyclical motion, no matter what anyone might say.
Mum.
I’ve missed her.
A vibration in the plane as the wheels touch the tarmac. Lights from the hangars.
Dad squeezing my hand.
I wonder if she brought Markus?
I haven’t really missed him much. What does that mean?
‘Back on Swedish soil!’ Dad says, and he looks happy. ‘Now to see if your mum’s made it on time, or if she’s still at work.’
Their bags.
Janne hates this part of travelling.
But there they are. Almost the first ones to appear, nothing got held up in the transfer between Heathrow and Stansted.
Their baggage.
Everything as it should be.
‘Come on, Tove.’
It’s nice to come home.
Malin stares at the automatic doors.
Taps her sandal-clad feet on the white stone floor, around her she can see happy people, expectant, focused.
She runs her hands over her dress, pushes her hair behind her ears, feels that she needs to go to the toilet but doesn’t want to go off now, the plane landed a while back and they should be here.
Now.
And the door opens once more.
There.
There they are, and she goes towards them, running, and she can see that they’re tired, but when Tove catches sight of her the tiredness disappears and Tove runs towards her and Malin runs and the air lifts and their bodies meet.
Hands, arms around each other.
Malin picks her daughter up.
How much do you weigh now?
Three thousand, one hundred and forty-three grams when you emerged from me.
And now?
Malin looks at Janne.
He’s standing behind the luggage trolley, seems unsure of what to do now. Malin puts Tove down, beckons him over and then they stand in the arrivals hall, feeling a warmth warmer and more genuine than any summer could ever conjure up.
PART THREE
You need to come, before now stops
On the way towards the final room
I haven’t finished yet.
I know what needs to happen now.
Nothing can stop this summer from burning, nothing can stop our love from coming back.
The world, our world, will be pure and free and we shall whisper the mute snakes’ words in each other’s ears, feel how they make us big, invincible.
He must disappear, be wiped out, and you will dare to come back again.
Everything will be white. Burning white, and innocent.
No one will be allowed to stop me.
Claws scratching storeroom shelves, spiders’ legs moving over your face.
My summer angels.
They can rest now, and soon they’ll have the company and love of someone who shares their history. And the very same love that I shall also receive.
I shall find another girl. She will be you.
Everything will be put right. It won’t hurt. Because soon there will be no pain any more.
47
Tove safely returned.
She’s sleeping under a freshly laundered white sheet in her bedroom and Malin thinks that it’s as if she’s never been away, as if Indonesia and Bali and bombers and undercurrents and the other side of the world have stopped existing, even as a possibility.
A mute drive from Nyköping, Tove sleeping in the back seat, she and Janne united in an eternal wordlessness, a silence that never becomes uncomfortable, but which feels more lonely that real loneliness.
Intermittent words.
‘Did you have a good time?’
‘Are the forest fires under control?’
‘It’s starting to resemble a firestorm in places.’
Janne came upstairs with them, carrying Tove’s large green Samsonite case, Malin offered him tea and to her surprise he accepted, said he could ring for a taxi home whenever he felt like it.
Tove had dropped off before the water had boiled and they drank their tea in the kitchen, as the sound of a man and woman arguing rose from the street, and once they had fallen silent the only sound was the ticking of the Ikea clock.
Just gone half past three now.
‘We were never good at that,’ Janne says as he puts his empty mug on the draining board.
‘Good at what?’
Malin is standing as close as she dares, doesn’t want to scare him off.
‘At arguing.’
Malin can feel anger rising up inside her, but suppresses the pointless emotion and manages to locate her calm, her longing again.
‘Sometimes it feels like we never had time to really get started.’
‘Maybe we didn’t.’
‘It’s probably good to do a bit of shouting every now and then.’
‘You think?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know what to think.’
Then Malin tells him about the case she’s working on, that she feels like heaven or earth has opened up and released a desperate evil on the city, and that she doesn’t know how to stop it.
‘Just like the fires,’ Janne says. ‘It seems like they don’t know how to get to grips with the flames.’
Then they stand silently in the kitchen for a while before Janne moves out into the hall.
‘Do you mind if I call for a taxi?’
‘Go ahead.’
Janne picks up the receiver.
Malin goes towards him in the hall, and as he keys in the number of the taxi company she says: ‘You can stay here.’
Janne stops.
‘I prefer my own bed to your sofa, Malin.’
‘You know that’s not what I meant.’
‘You know it wouldn’t work, Malin.’
‘Why wouldn’t it work? Just go into the bedroom and lie down, it’s no harder than that.’
‘It’s stupid, Malin, what good would come of it? We’re all done with . . .’
Malin puts one index finger over his lips and his breath is warm against her skin.
Close to him now.
‘Shush, don’t say anything else. Can’t we just let tonight be tonight?’
Janne looks at her, and she takes his hand and leads him into the bedroom and he follows her without any further hesitation.
Hard or soft.
Punishment or reward.
That’s what physical love can be.
Janne’s chest against hers, one of her legs wrapped around his body and it was so long ago now, but she remembers exactly how his cock feels inside her, how it takes her over and how her body’s independent recognition makes her calm and feverish, knowing exactly how to move to be filled in a way that no one else fills her.