The early-morning confusion gave way to a harmonious, dreamlike state. He knew he was on the right track. The phone cord around Vivan’s throat, the terror in her eyes, and that rattling sound had done him good. She had gone quiet so quickly. Her eyes, filled with suspicion and then panic-stricken, had made him laugh. That was the last image she had seen, his laughing, foul-smelling mouth. He had wanted to draw out this laugh. Disappointed, he had kicked her dead body, kicked her in under the bed.
John had been killed by a knife. “Stabbed repeatedly,” the paper had said. Vincent suspected that his eyes would have been as full of terror as Gunilla’s and Vivan’s. Did Vincent have a helper? A quiet avenging force that he was unaware of, or had he been there himself? He was becoming more unsure. He had suffered memory blanks before, especially when he was angry. Maybe he had been there, had stabbed John.
As usual he stopped on Nybro bridge and stared down into the river. Even though it was bitterly cold and in the middle of December, there was a sliver of open water in the middle. Vincent Hahn rested his eyes there for a moment before continuing over the bridge. Again the feeling that he was wandering in a foreign land came over him, a land where no one knew him, where the buildings had been erected by unknown hands, and where even the language had become foreign to him. He became more alert to the people around him, trying to read something in their eyes, but they looked away quickly, or never met his gaze.
He raised his hand and walked straight across the street without paying any attention to the fact that the road was slippery and the cars had trouble braking on the icy surface. Someone shouted at him, words he didn’t understand. He could see that they were angry at him. He took out the knife he had picked up at Vivan’s apartment. A few teenagers shouted something, turned around, and ran.
Vincent repeated the maneuver, stepping straight out into the road. A car had to slam on the brakes, skidded to the side, and almost crashed into a parked taxi. The taxi driver got out and shouted at him. Vincent waved back with his knife.
He walked toward St. Erik’s torg, where people were selling things from stands. An older couple were selling Christmas ornaments. He stopped and looked at all their colorful wares. There were few customers and the couple looked at him expectantly.
“I don’t have a real home,” he said.
“It doesn’t cost anything to have a look,” said the woman.
The man, who was wearing an enormous fur hat, pulled off a leather glove, picked up a bag of homemade candy, and held it out to him.
“I have no money,” Vincent said.
“Take it, you look like you need a sweet,” said the woman. “It’s our house blend.”
The man nodded. The hand holding the bag shook slightly. Vincent looked at it, at how the blue-black veins made a pattern on the broad back of the hand. The nails were thick, curved, and yellowed.
“He’s had a stroke,” the woman said. “He can’t talk.”
Vincent took the bag without saying anything.
“This is the most beautiful present anyone’s ever given me,” he said finally.
The woman nodded. She had green-blue eyes, with a faint grayish cast over the cornea. Apart from a few liver spots on her cheek her skin was smooth and youthful. Vincent thought she had probably laughed a lot in her life.
A younger couple came over, looking through the collection of wreaths.
“They have wonderful candy,” Vincent said.
The young woman glanced at him and smiled.
“We’ll take one of these,” she said, holding up a lingonberry wreath.
Vincent left the booth and wandered on aimlessly, with a hole inside that was only growing bigger. He had felt it many times before. It was a black hole, indescribably dark and deep, from which thoughts both emerged and were drowned. He felt as if he were caught in a maelstrom and was being sucked down into himself.
He tried to say something and heard an echo in his head. The dizziness came and went. He had another piece of candy and stopped outside a shop window where a tabloid headline promised tips for a better sex life. People walked in and out, relaxed, carrying colorful packages, looking at him briefly, smiling.
Where should he go? His legs could hardly hold him anymore. The candy had given him some energy, but wherever he went there were new challenges. The sidewalk was becoming more crowded. He kept bumping into people and their packages repeatedly, pushed hither and thither.
When he had decided to head to the east side again he was stopped by a man wearing a Santa outfit who tried to interest him in a sleigh ride through the old town. Two hundred and ninety kronor for an hour. Vincent accepted a flyer and walked on. The dizziness was getting worse. He leaned against a wall and anxiety charged over him like a battalion on horseback. He took cover, put his arm over his face, and cried out into the wind.
The police came an hour later. The owner of an art gallery had alerted them. He had observed Vincent for a while before he called, had watched the snow falling around him. It was a striking image, or composition, the dark-clad man, a cap pulled down over his forehead, crouched against the wall as if he was afraid that the people walking by with their Christmas purchases would hit him, the gently falling snow-all this created an image of tangible authenticity. It was happening here and now. The gallery owner stood there in the warmth, with the miniatures on the wall, people came and went, Christmas greetings were exchanged.
This image was also a reminder of the timelessness of need. Through the ages thousands of needy people had wandered past on this street. They had come through the city gates to the north, fleeing hunger and punitive overlords, looking for something better. In times of pestilence they had gone in the opposite direction, driven away from the overcrowded and stinking city.
This could be any city in the Northern Hemisphere. The gallery owner saw the homeless man as a reminder of the limits but also the possibilities of contemporary art. A classic motif of genre painting; a challenge for contemporary video artists.
But these aesthetic ruminations eventually gave way to compassion. The gallery owner called the police and they turned up thirty minutes later. When he saw them he stepped out into the street. The officers seemed oblivious of any aesthetic dimension, seeing this only as a routine task of picking up a drunk, perhaps mentally ill, vagrant.
The cold had penetrated Vincent’s clothes. He had tucked his bare hands into his coat and his head had fallen toward his knees. One of the officers shook his shoulder. Vincent woke up, opened his eyes, and saw the uniformed policeman. The other officer was talking to the gallery owner.
Vincent had dreamed that he was in a country where there was snow on the ground all year round. A land of eternal ice where the people couldn’t spit at each other and had to make do with stiff grimaces when they wanted to express their displeasure. He had been standing on a street corner, selling lottery tickets that no one wanted to buy. He had gestured in vain. It wasn’t possible to speak, then the cold threatened to pierce your heart, and that was the end.
“Hey, buddy, how’s it going?” the officer asked kindly. He didn’t smell the usual stink of alcohol on this man, he wan’t one of their regulars. In a half hour the officer was scheduled to finish his beat and start his holiday. He was going up north to Ångermanland with his family.
Vincent moved his head stiffly, trying to dispel the dream and focus on the officer. Slowly the present overtook his consciousness. He saw the uniformed legs, heard the voice, felt the hand, and with lightning speed he had taken out his knife and thrust it upward in a slicing motion. The bread knife sped toward the neck of Jan-Erik Hollman, born in Lund, christened in Gudmundrå church, where his funeral would be held in a week or so, hit the artery, pierced the neck, and went out the other side.