Everything just happens.
She explores Sofia with her eyes closed. Letting her hands, lips and skin see for her. Sofia’s neck is warm and vibrates against her mouth. Her breasts are soft and taste of salt. It’s a strong body, a powerful body that she wants to make her own. Her stomach slowly moves up and down, and Jeanette’s fingertips detect soft little hairs that get more numerous and coarser below her navel.
Her tongue is soon inside her and her own arousal flares.
She feels dizzy. As if everything is fluid and her brain is finally giving way to her body and not the other way. The room around them no longer exists.
Their movements are soft and unquestioned and she loses herself in the warmth down there. Hardly notices when Sofia rolls onto her side and lies the other way up.
Come closer, she thinks.
Sofia understands. Every muscle in Sofia’s body understands.
Everything is fluid and they merge together to form a single beating heart, a single simmering being.
She thinks she might be crying.
Her tears are of release and gratitude, and time no longer exists. Later she would come to think of this night as simultaneously as long as an eternity and as short as a moment.
Afterwards the bed is warm and damp and Jeanette pushes the covers aside. Sofia’s hand strokes her stomach in soft, slow movements.
She glances down at her naked body. It looks better when she’s lying down than standing up. Her stomach is flatter and the scar from the Caesarean section seems smoother.
If she squints, she looks pretty good. If she examines carefully, all she sees are liver spots, veins and cellulite.
Sofia’s body is purer, like a teenager’s, and right now it’s moist with sweat. On her arms and back Jeanette can see little white lines, almost like scars.
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
THEY’RE LYING IN the warmth of the bed, and Sofia has no idea how many hours have passed since they got in.
‘You’re wonderful,’ Jeanette says.
I’m not, Sofia thinks. Her cleansing process is exhausting, and she had been too hasty in thinking that she was no longer shocked by her memories. What she now knows about herself turns everything upside down. If most of her memories are constructed out of things other people have told her, then what’s left of her past?
How can memories like that arise?
How can they be so strong that she could seriously believe that she had murdered several children, and Lasse too? What else is false apart from her memories, and how will she ever be able to trust herself again?
Maybe it’s best not to remember after all?
As soon as she is alone again she can at least do a search for Lars Magnus Pettersson, that would be a concrete act, and if he’s dead she’ll be able to find out about it. But with Samuel she can’t do much more than wait for her memories to return.
She feels wiped out, but Jeanette seems unaffected by the hours they’ve spent in bed, apart from the fact that she’s glowing with sweat and her face is slightly flushed.
‘What are you thinking? You seem a bit distant.’ Jeanette strokes her cheek.
‘Oh, it’s nothing. I’m just trying to catch my breath.’ Sofia smiles.
Jeanette’s body is so strong, so powerful. As for her, she’d rather be a bit rounder, more feminine, but knows that’s a vain hope that will never be realised. No matter how much she eats.
There’s one thing that she ought to have told Jeanette already. When she spoke to her on the phone the day after her meeting with Annette Lundstr?m.
The adopted children.
‘When I met Annette she was incoherent, and I had trouble working out how much of what she said was in her imagination or not. But there’s one detail I’ve been thinking about since then, and I think you ought to ask her about it when you see her.’
Jeanette’s eyes narrow. ‘What’s that?’
‘She mentioned adopted children. Said Viggo Dürer helped children from difficult backgrounds abroad come to Sweden, and that they used to live with him until he found new families for them. Sometimes they only stayed a few days, sometimes several months.’
‘Jesus …’ Jeanette runs a hand through her hair, which is wet with their combined sweat, and Sofia gently strokes her arm with the back of her hand.
‘An adoption agency? As well as being a pig farmer, a lawyer and an accountant at a sawmill. Multitasking, to put it mildly. He’s supposed to have been in a concentration camp as well.’
Sofia is brought up short. ‘A concentration camp?’
‘I can’t put together a picture of the man,’ Jeanette says. ‘He just doesn’t seem to make sense.’
A memory comes back to Sofia. Flaring up like a dazzling spark before fading and leaving a blind spot on her retina.
All the randy little Danish bitches. They were whores for the Germans. Five fucking thousand of the swine.
A memory of a beach in Denmark and Viggo assaulting her. Or had he? All she remembers is that he had played one of his ‘games’ with her, groaning and rubbing himself against her, sticking his fingers in her and then getting up and walking away. She had been left lying there, her body sore from the stony ground, and her top had been torn. She wants to tell Jeanette, but can’t.
Not yet. It’s the shame that’s stopping her, it’s always shame that gets in the way.
‘Come here,’ Jeanette whispers. ‘Move closer to me.’
Sofia curls up with her back to Jeanette. She huddles like a child, shuts her eyes, and enjoys the closeness, warmth and the calm deep breathing from the body behind her.
They lie there in silence, and soon she realises that Jeanette has fallen asleep. She lies awake for a while, but when sleep finally comes it’s more of an unsettled doze. A state she has experienced many times before, neither sleep nor wakefulness, nor a dream.
She leaves her body, glides up the wall and lies down on the ceiling.
The feeling is soothing and pleasant, like drifting around in water. But when she tries to turn her head and look at herself and Jeanette down below under the sheets, every muscle in her body seems to be locked and the pleasant feeling is instantly replaced by panic.
Suddenly she’s lying back in bed again and she can’t move, as if her body has been paralysed by some sort of poison. She realises that someone is sitting on her, an indescribable weight that’s numbing her body and making it impossible to breathe.
The unknown body leaves her, and even if she can’t turn her head and look around, she senses that the body has got off her and is getting out of bed behind her before leaving the room like a fleeing shadow.