Sofia stiffens. Johan?
She’d completely forgotten that there are other people in Jeanette’s life.
‘Did you say he was thirteen?’ she says.
‘That’s right. He’s starting secondary school this autumn.’
Martin would have been thirty this year.
If his parents hadn’t happened upon an advertisement for a house for rent in Dala-Floda.
If he hadn’t wanted to go on the Ferris wheel.
If he hadn’t changed his mind and wanted to go swimming instead.
If he hadn’t thought the water was too cold.
If he hadn’t fallen in the water.
Sofia thinks about how Martin disappeared after their turn on the Ferris wheel.
She looks deep into Jeanette’s eyes as she hears Victoria’s voice inside her head.
‘How about taking Johan to the fair at Gr?na Lund some weekend?’
Sofia waits for Jeanette’s reaction.
‘That sounds great. What a nice idea,’ Jeanette says with a smile. ‘You’re going to love him.’
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
JEANETTE LIGHTS A cigarette. So who is Sofia Zetterlund, really? She feels a closeness to her, but at the same time she’s so out of reach. Sometimes so incredibly present, only to turn into someone else, suddenly and without warning.
Maybe that’s why she’s so captivated by her. Precisely because she is surprising, never predictable.
Isn’t it also the case that her voice seems to change sometimes?
Once Sofia has shut the bathroom door behind her, Jeanette gets up from the armchair and goes over to the bookcase. A number of thick volumes about psychology, psychoanalytical diagnosis and the cognitive development of children. A lot of philosophy, sociology, biography and fiction. Thomas de Quincey, The 120 Days of Sodom, Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, side by side with Jan Guillou’s political novels and Stieg Larsson’s crime trilogy.
At the far left of the shelf is a book whose title catches her interest. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. As she pulls the book from the shelf she notices a little catch sticking out of the side of the bookcase. Odd to have a lock on a bookcase, she thinks as Sofia comes into the room.
‘So you like Larsson?’ Sofia says.
‘Which one? Stig or Stieg? The wicked one or the good one?’
Jeanette laughs and shows her the cover. Stig Larsson’s New Year. ‘The wicked one, I presume?’
‘I see you’ve got two copies of Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto.’
‘Yes, I was young and angry back then. These days I just think it’s a very entertaining book. I now laugh at what I once took dead seriously.’
Jeanette puts the book back. ‘SCUM. The Society for Cutting Up Men. I’m not that well informed, although I have read it. I must have been young at the time, a teenager, I guess. In what way do you think it’s entertaining?’
‘It’s radical, and the entertainment value is in the radicalism. It’s so unrelenting in its approach to the bad sides of men that guys end up looking so ridiculous that I can’t help laughing. I was ten when I first read it, and back then I bought the whole thing. Literally. Now I can laugh at it, both the details and the book as a whole. That’s much better.’
Jeanette gulps down the last of the wine. ‘Did you say you were ten? I was forced to read Lord of the Rings by my romantically inclined dad when I was nine or ten. What sort of childhood did you have, if you were reading books like that when you were so young?’
‘I picked it myself, actually.’
Sofia stands in silence, breathing deeply.
Jeanette can see that Sofia is upset and asks what’s wrong.
‘It’s the book you were holding when I came in,’ she replies. ‘It had a big impact on me.’
‘This one, you mean?’ Jeanette pulls out the book about the child soldier and looks at the cover. A young boy carrying a rifle over his shoulder.
‘Yes, that’s the one. Samuel Bai was a child soldier in Sierra Leone, like Ishmael Beah. I was asked to do a fact-check for the Swedish edition, but I’m afraid I was too much of a coward to do it.’
Jeanette glances through the text on the back cover.
‘Read it out loud,’ Sofia says. ‘The bit that’s underlined on page two hundred and seventeen.’
Jeanette opens the book and reads.
There was a hunter who went into the bush to kill a monkey. When he was close enough and behind a tree where he could clearly see the monkey, he raised his rifle and aimed. Just when he was about to pull the trigger, the monkey spoke: ‘If you shoot me, your mother will die, and if you don’t, your father will die.’ The monkey resumed its position, chewing its food, and every so often scratched its head or the side of its belly.
What would you do if you were the hunter?
Jeanette looks up at Sofia and puts the book down.
‘I wouldn’t,’ Sofia says.
Grisslinge – a Suburb
SOFIA ZETTERLUND TAKES the metro from Skanstull to Gullmarsplan, where she had parked her car the previous day. She didn’t want it to be caught by the cameras that watch the roads leading in and out of central Stockholm on weekdays.
The ?rsta forest colours the view from the Skanstull Bridge in shades of dark green. Down in the marina there is feverish activity, and the outdoor terrace of the Skanskvarn restaurant is already full.
After several months with little appetite, Sofia can no longer tell the difference between different types of pain. Physical nausea, which makes her throw up several times each day, has merged with her mental pain and with the torment of her tight shoes. Everything that hurts has become one, and over the course of the summer the darkness inside her has grown denser.
She has been finding it harder and harder to appreciate things she once found interesting, and things she used to like have started to get on her nerves.
No matter how often she washes she thinks she smells of sweat, and that her feet start to stink within an hour or so of showering. She carefully observes people around her to see if anyone shows any sign of detecting her bodily odours. When there is no reaction, she assumes that she is the only one bothered by them.
She’s run out of paroxetine tablets, and she hasn’t felt up to contacting anyone to get more.
She can’t even be bothered to use the tape recorder any more.
After each session she would end up exhausted, and it would take several hours before she felt like herself again.
At the start it felt good to have someone who listened, but in the end there was nothing more to say.
She doesn’t need analysis. That time has passed.
She needs action.