The Circle (Hammer)

33



MINOO HAS OFTEN fantasised about taking this route. But the realisation of how pathetic it would be has always prevented her. Tonight, though, it feels right – she’s already so pitiful that she may as well humiliate herself even more. She has no pride left to lose.

On either side of her there are identical single-storey buildings in which a few residents have attempted to defy the uniformity by putting up decorative fans and brightly coloured lamps. She is walking along the even-numbered side, looking at the odd numbers. She stops beneath a streetlamp, opposite Uggelbovägen number thirty-seven.

Minoo looks at the yellow house. It has a tiled roof with a tall black chimney. A pair of windows flanks the front door: to the left, a square bathroom window with frosted glass, and to the right, a bigger one with the blinds lowered. It’s dark inside.

She tries to imagine what Max looks like when he comes home in the evening, how he strides up to the door, unlocks it and goes inside … But it’s as if her imagination has stopped working. She can’t picture him living in this house. It’s too ordinary. Anyone could be living there.

Minoo remembers what Rebecka said that autumn day. If you feel there’s something between you, you’re probably right.

She could have done with Rebecka beside her right now. She’s never felt more alone.

Minoo gasps, and seconds later, tears are welling in her eyes. They run down her cheeks and wet her scarf. She snivels, digs out a crumpled handkerchief from her jacket pocket and blows her nose.

‘Minoo?’

She turns to see Max walking towards her.

Deep down this was what she’d been hoping for. That something would happen with Max tonight, good or bad, it doesn’t matter. So what if he laughs at her, pities her? It doesn’t matter, just so long as he sees her.

‘Hi,’ she says.

Max stops in front of her. His breath shrouds his face in clouds of steam. ‘What are you doing here?’

His eyes probe her. It’s impossible to read his expression. ‘I was out for a walk,’ Minoo answers. ‘I felt shut in.’ That isn’t a lie at least.

‘Is anything the matter?’

Minoo shrugs.

‘Is it Rebecka?’ Max asks.

‘M-hm.’

She doesn’t dare say any more.

Max nods thoughtfully. Then he casts a quick glance at the house opposite. ‘I live there.’

‘Really?’ Minoo lowers her gaze and hopes he hasn’t realised that she came here in a stalker mode.

‘Would you like to come in?’ he asks.

She nods.

They walk across the street together. She can hardly believe she’s on her way to Max’s house. With him.

He unlocks the door and turns on the light in the hall. ‘Shall I take your jacket?’ he asks.

She pulls down the zip and he helps her off with it. It ought perhaps to make her feel like an adult, but she feels more like a toddler at nursery. While he hangs up her jacket, she removes her shoes and hopes he doesn’t notice they’re an abnormally large forty-one.

‘Would you like some tea?’

‘Yes, please.’

Max goes to the kitchen. Minoo catches sight of the bathroom door and slips inside.

When she turns on the light she’s met by grey tiles and a blue linoleum floor. It’s just an ordinary bathroom, yet she’s in an enchanted place because it’s Max’s. It’s full of clues about who he is. He brushes his teeth with an electric toothbrush, but shaves with a manual razor. He washes his hands with unscented soap from a pump bottle. He buys toothpaste in huge economy-size tubes. Perhaps she’ll crack some important code if she stares at these things long enough. But then, of course, he’d wonder what on earth she was doing in there.

Minoo turns towards the mirror and sees her unmade-up face. It’s as red with acne as her eyes are with crying. If only she didn’t look so grotesque she’d dare to imagine that Max wanted her here. That he isn’t just taking pity on her for being so pathetic.

‘Stop it,’ she whispers to herself. ‘Get out of here!’

She unlocks the door and steps into the hall. Music comes on further inside the house. A moment later Max appears with two cups of tea. He looks so warm and friendly standing there like that. Not to mention hot. So hot she can feel her ears flushing. She wonders what it would be like to kiss him. To kiss anyone, for that matter. She feels a tingling in her wrists and the strength drains from her arms.

I have to go, she thinks, before I make a total fool of myself.

‘Are you coming?’ he asks.

She follows him into the living room. It’s tastefully furnished yet homely. There is a sofa against the far wall. To the right of it stand shelves filled with books, films and a few old LPs. A framed poster of a woman with dark, curly hair in three-quarter profile hangs on the opposite wall. She’s wearing a draped blue silk dress. Her head is angled slightly downward and her expression is serious and introspective – suffering. In one hand she’s holding a pomegranate, while the other grasps the wrist. There’s something angst-ridden about the pose. Minoo takes an instant liking to the painting. She feels somehow as if she knows the woman.

She glances at the books. An assortment of Swedish and English titles. She’s glad they aren’t the tired old selection of novels that you see in everyone’s bookshelves and will flood the flea markets ten years from now.

‘See anything you like?’

Her gaze falls on The Lover and her cheeks heat.

‘This one’s great,’ she answers and fingers the spine of Steppenwolf. Great? She could hit herself. Interesting, fascinating, fantastic. Any other superlative would have sounded better. But Max seems pleasantly surprised.

‘It’s one of my favourites,’ he says.

‘And I really like those,’ she continues, and points, hoping it isn’t too obvious how hard she’s trying to impress him. Sure, she’s read those books and she likes them. But she reads other stuff, too. Fantasy and science fiction. Max would probably find that immature. Wouldn’t he?

‘The Stranger and Notes from the Underground,’ Max says, when he sees which titles she’s pointing at. He laughs. ‘You’re not a fan of happy books, are you?’

‘Happy books depress me,’ she answers, which is true. But she hears how it sounds and smiles sheepishly. ‘And that didn’t sound pretentious in the least.’

‘It’s okay,’ Max says, returning her smile. ‘Especially for a sixteen-year-old.’

The comment about her age stings a little, but she’s still intoxicated by the attention. She sits down on the black sofa. Max puts the cups on the table and sinks down beside her. There’s just a metre between them. She could reach out and touch him. At least, she could if she were a different, much braver and better-looking person. Vanessa, for example.

‘What a nice place you’ve got,’ she says.

‘Thanks.’ He doesn’t say more. He just looks at her with his greenish-brown eyes.

Minoo’s gaze wanders towards the steaming cups on the coffee-table. ‘Do you like it here?’ she asks. ‘In Engelsfors, I mean.’

‘No.’

When she looks at him he smiles. Minoo can’t help but smile, too. ‘Are we so terrible?’

‘It’s not the students but the other teachers. They want everything to be as it’s always been. In the beginning I thought they might be more open to change. But now it’s been almost a whole term …’

Minoo had always thought teachers stuck together. That they agreed on everything. He’s speaking to me like he would to a grown-up, she realises. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asks.

‘I don’t know. I’ll stay till the summer anyway. Then we’ll have to see.’

Minoo reaches out for her cup and hopes she can wash down the desperate cry of Don’t go! that’s trying to erupt from her throat. Tea spills over the rim of the cup as she lifts it, and droplets of boiling liquid spatter her skin.

‘Careful,’ Max says, taking it from her.

His hand touches hers and she’s happy that he’s holding the cup or she would have spilt it over both of them. ‘Thanks,’ she mumbles.

He dries the cup with a napkin, then hands it back to her. Minoo’s damp fingers slip on the smooth porcelain handle. She raises the cup slowly to her lips again and sips.

‘How about you?’ he asks.

‘What?’

Max pulls up his leg slightly so that he’s facing her. His arm is resting on the back of the sofa. If she moved a little closer he’d be able to put it around her, like he did when they were sitting on the steps at school. She’d curl up against him, rest her head on his chest.

‘I suspect you and Engelsfors don’t mix very well either,’ he says.

Minoo gives a silly, nervous laugh and puts down her cup. Her hand is far too unsteady. ‘I hate this town,’ she says.

‘I can understand that,’ he says. ‘You don’t fit in here.’ He must have seen the anxious look in her eyes because he reaches out and lays his hand on hers. ‘I meant it as a compliment,’ he says.

His hand is so warm and soft against hers. And he doesn’t take it away.

‘I grew up in a little backwater, not far from here, that’s just like Engelsfors,’ he says. ‘I remember how trapped I felt. How lonely and claustrophobic. But later you see that there doesn’t have to be anything wrong with you because you don’t fit in. Could even be the other way around.’

‘Rebecka fitted in,’ Minoo says. ‘At least, nobody thought she was strange. But she was still different.’

‘She meant a lot to you,’ Max says softly.

That was an opening, as if he’d said, ‘It’s okay to talk if you want to.’

‘Not just to me,’ she says. ‘Everybody loved her. Especially Gustaf, her boyfriend. They were such a nice couple.’

Minoo manages to stop talking and leans back into the sofa. His hand is still on hers. She wonders if the back of your hand can sweat. She turns her gaze towards the woman on the wall. ‘Who painted that? The original, I mean.’ Good thing I pointed out I knew it was a poster and not an original, she thinks to herself.

Max removes his hand. ‘Dante Gabriel Rossetti,’ he says, sounding a little like his teacher-self. ‘He belonged to an English art movement – the Pre-Raphaelites. The model’s name was Jane Morris. She was Rossetti’s muse. In this one he painted her as Persephone, who was carried off by Hades, god of the underworld. She became his sad queen.’

Minoo gazes at the woman’s milky-white skin and thinks that she must look like a monster by comparison. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she says, and turns back to Max. ‘She’s beautiful.’

‘Do you remember the friend I was telling you about? The one who committed suicide?’ he asks softly.

Minoo nods.

‘Her name was Alice. She showed me that picture … She looked so much like her, it was uncanny. She used to joke that she was Jane Morris’s reincarnation.’

‘You loved her.’ Minoo doesn’t know where those words came from.

Max looks at her in surprise, as if she’s woken him up. ‘Yes,’ he answers. ‘I did.’

She meets his gaze and holds it.

‘You’re a very unusual person, Minoo,’ he says quietly. ‘I wish …’

He falls silent.

‘What?’ she asks, in a voice that is no more than a whisper.

She moves closer to him – just a hair’s breadth – but she feels as if she’s just thrown herself off a cliff. It’s now or never. Let it happen, she thinks. Please, let it happen.

Max’s hand, which just a moment ago was resting on the back of the sofa, finds its way to her shoulder and lies there.

It’s as if they’ve become each other’s reflection. When he moves towards her, she moves towards him, until they’re so close that their lips meet.

Minoo has always worried that she’d do something wrong the first time she kissed someone. But Max is kissing her now and it’s not difficult at all. It’s simple, it’s perfect. His lips are warm and soft and taste a little of tea. His hands are on her back, then on her waist, and she moves in closer to him.

Then he stops himself. His lips pull away from hers and he straightens, takes away his hands. He presses the tips of his fingers to his forehead and shuts his eyes tightly, as if he had a splitting headache. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says finally. ‘This is wrong. You’re my student … And I’m far too old for you—’

‘No,’ she interrupts. ‘You don’t understand. I may be sixteen, but I don’t feel sixteen. I can’t even speak to people my own age.’

‘I understand you might feel like that,’ he says, ‘but when you’re older you’ll realise how young you actually were.’

It hurts so much that she can’t understand how she can still be alive. She gets up from the sofa. ‘I have to go.’ She rushes out into the hall and pulls on her jacket, shoves her feet into her shoes and staggers towards the front door.

‘Minoo,’ she hears Max say behind her.

She presses down the handle and almost falls out of the house. She continues straight across the street and runs as fast as she can, back the way she came, without turning once.

She doesn’t slow down until she reaches Storvall Park. The few scattered streetlamps spread pools of light in the dense darkness. Minoo sinks on to a bench. Snowflakes begin to fall and more come in quick succession. The first real snowfall of the year.

If I just sit here without moving I’ll soon be hidden under a layer of snow, Minoo thinks hopefully. I can thaw in time for spring, completely dead.

A low doleful mewing drifts through the park. She listens into the darkness. It’s impossible to tell which direction it’s coming from. The wind blows through bushes and the trees’ bare branches. A shadow glides into the light of the streetlamp.

Cat.

All at once she feels enormous pity for the poor creature. We’re both wretched, you and me. ‘Pss, pss, pss,’ she says, trying to get its attention.

The cat stops, looks at her and moves closer. Then suddenly it lets out a blurk and bends its neck as if something were stuck in its throat. Blurk. Minoo is glad she didn’t pet it – who knows what diseases it has?

Blurk, it croaks again.

And suddenly she realises what the animal is doing: it’s trying to cough up a hairball.

‘Goodnight, Cat,’ she mumbles, and stands up. ‘Good luck.’

Blurk, Cat responds, and something lands on the ground in front of it with a tinkle. A small object that glitters in the light of the streetlamp.

Cat looks at Minoo urgently and she moves closer.

There, in a little pool of cat puke and hair, lies a key.

Minoo hesitates for a long moment, then picks it up.

Like some kind of affirmation, Cat rubs against her once, then disappears into the darkness.