Madeleine gets out of the car and walks over to the quayside. The water here is as black as it was out in the ?land Sea.
She puts her headphones on, turns on the radio and tunes it in between two frequencies. A faint wordless hiss that usually makes her feel calm, but now she only feels frustrated, and she digs out Clint Mansell’s film score to Requiem for a Dream instead. With the opening notes of ‘Lux Aeterna’ thundering in her head, she starts walking up towards the former prison building.
When she reaches the old stone wall she stops and looks at it with a degree of reverence. She thinks about all the people who have passed through here. Understands all the anger that was stifled by the work of cutting the rectangular blocks from lumps of granite, and can feel in her own chest the hatred that would have pounded beneath the rough prison uniforms of the prisoners who were forced to build their own wall.
And she thinks about the moment when she finally decided not to be a victim any more.
France, 2007
Don’t take my hate away. It’s the only thing I’ve got.
THE SUN WAS high above the mountain ridge, the snaking road was eating its way along the sides, and five hundred metres below the Verdon River looked like a thin turquoise line. The safety barriers are low and death no further away than a few seconds’ hesitation or a wrong reflex decision when you encountered another vehicle. Above her were another two hundred metres of mountain that ended in bright blue sky, and there were regular warnings of landslides. Every time she passed one of the signs she let out a loud yell, because the thought of being buried under an avalanche of cold rock appealed to her.
If I’m going to manage to live, Madeleine thought, then they can’t be allowed to.
She didn’t believe in a longing for revenge as a way for a victim to cling to life. No, it was hate that kept her breathing, that had kept her alive since her time in Denmark.
Will the hate stop when they’re dead? she thought. Will I have peace?
She realised at once that the questions were irrelevant. She was free to choose, and her choice would be the simple, original path.
In many primitive cultures revenge was a duty, a fundamental right that gave the victim the opportunity to regain respect. Retribution marked the end of a conflict, and the right to vengeance was unquestioned; the act in itself was the actual resolution of the conflict, and there was never any need for analysis.
She remembered what she had had to learn when she was very small. When she was still unspoiled and could acquire proper knowledge.
She had learned that all people live their lives in two different worlds. One is a prosaic life and the other poetic, but only certain people have the ability to move between the worlds and experience them as separate from each other, or as synchronous, symbiotic.
One world was like an X-ray picture, the prosaic world, while the other was a naked, living, poetic human body. The one that she had now chosen to enter.
The road sloped down steeply, and after a bend she shut her eyes and took her hands off the wheel.
The next few seconds, containing the possibility that she was heading straight for a low, poorly maintained road barrier and on into the deep ravine, were transformed into a liberating confluence.
Life and death at the same time.
When she opened her eyes again she was still in the middle of the road, with the drop a safe distance away on the other side of the roadway. She had survived with several metres to spare.
Her heart was pounding hard and her whole body shivering. This was happiness. Exaltation at not being afraid of dying, yet simultaneously a sense of lightness.
She knew that a person wasn’t dead once their heart stopped beating. When the brain was disconnected from the heart it entered a new state where there was no time. Time and space lost their meaning and consciousness went on existing forever.
It was all about how you regarded your own existence, and how you saw death. If you knew that death was just another state of consciousness, then you didn’t need to hesitate before killing. You weren’t sentencing someone to a lack of existence, you were just sentencing them to enter a new state, beyond time and space.
She was approaching another bend, and this time she slowed down, but moved into the other lane before sweeping round the edge of the rock face. Then she shut her eyes after the bend, when she was back on the straight. No oncoming cars.
No death this time either. But life and death in a short period of symbiosis.
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
THEY’VE FINISHED THE red wine and have moved into the living room, leaving the discussion of paedophilia and cannibalism in the kitchen.
Those thoughts can lurk in a dark corner until tomorrow.
And they’ve switched to white wine. It feels lighter, cleaner, and Jeanette starts to feel better as the conversation slips onto more private subjects.
She talks about her evening together with Johan, when they watched football, and Sofia agrees that that’s the right way to handle him.
‘Johan will be fine,’ Sofia says. ‘He’ll survive the divorce, believe me. Have you and ?ke signed the papers yet?’
‘Yes, when we met yesterday at lunchtime. Before they left for London. It feels very definite, somehow.’
If Jeanette has ever hesitated up to now because of some sense that she had to be faithful to ?ke, that feeling is gone. Maybe because of something as simple as signing divorce papers.
Sofia’s reaction is a cautious smile. She puts her wine glass down and looks at Jeanette.
‘You mean a lot to me,’ Jeanette says. ‘You’ve made me realise that …’
She tails off. Can’t quite express how she feels.
‘Realise what?’ Sofia prompts. Her smile is no longer shy.
It’s expectant.
Jeanette tries to find the right words, but isn’t confident that she’ll ever be able to find them.
‘That I’m not as uncomplicated as I thought,’ she tries.
‘You mean sexually?’
‘Yes.’
Jeanette suddenly finds it much easier to breathe.
That a single word can make so much difference …
Yes.
She’s just said yes to Sofia.
It just happens.
One kiss, then they leave the living room.
Up the stairs.
A kiss is a start. As the night outside is mother of the day.
For the first time in she doesn’t know how long, Jeanette wants to go to bed.
Blood is pumping through her body in an entirely new way, yet it still feels so familiar.
A pure, original feeling of liberation, of released longing.
Sofia rolls over on the bed and puts her hands under the pillow. The contours of her naked hips distract Jeanette.
What’s going on? she thinks. It’s as if her movements are happening automatically, as if she can’t control them.