JUST BEFORE SHE reaches the Johanneshov Bridge, Jeanette Kihlberg sees from the big, round clock at Skanstull that it’s twenty past nine, and decides to call Sofia again.
As she dials the number and presses her phone to her ear, she hears the siren of an emergency vehicle. In the rear-view mirror she sees three fire engines approaching at high speed.
The phone rings, but there’s no answer.
Jeanette wishes she could be somewhere else, with a completely different life, and remembers a documentary she once saw about a man who had suddenly had enough.
Instead of going to work at University Hospital in Copenhagen as usual, he turned round and cycled all the way to southern France. Leaving his wife and children in Denmark and making a whole new life for himself as a blacksmith in a small mountain village. When the reporters found him, he said he didn’t want anything to do with his old life. He told everyone to fuck off.
Jeanette knows she’d be capable of doing the same, leaving everything for ?ke to sort out.
The only thing complicating matters was Johan, but he could always join her later. She keeps her passport in her bag, so there’s actually nothing stopping her. In an odd way her anxiety seems to relent, as if the awareness that she isn’t actually stuck makes it less urgent to break free.
The music on the radio is interrupted by an announcement telling people living in Grisslinge to keep their windows shut because of a serious house fire.
She drives on aimlessly.
Falling free.
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
SOFIA ZETTERLUND FINDS the apartment deserted and empty. There’s no sign of Gao, and when she goes into the room behind the bookcase she sees that he’s tidied it up and cleaned it. It smells of detergent, even if there’s still a faint smell of urine.
The coarse blanket has been laid neatly over the mattress.
The syringes are on the little table next to the bottle of Xylocain, and she wonders why her colleague at the clinic, Johansson the dentist, has never noticed that they’re missing. Once again, fate has been her friend.
She gets irritated that Gao has shown initiative, that he has acted without her giving him orders. What’s going on?
She feels an uncontrollable wave of fear rise up. The whole situation is alien to her. Suddenly things are happening that she can’t influence, and something she has no control over seems to be developing.
Without actually realising how it happens, she finds herself screaming hysterically. Tears are streaming down her face, and she can’t stop howling. There’s so much trying to get out, all at the same time. She bangs on the walls until she loses the feeling in both arms.
The attack lasts almost half an hour, and when she’s calmed down, mainly as a result of physical exhaustion, she curls up in a foetal position on the soft floor.
The smell of smoke tickles her nose.
She dreams about the scars she has on her body. Wounds that have healed, forming pale marks on her skin.
Other people’s breath, making her feel nauseous, with the result that she finds it hard to kiss anyone.
Experiences are essential for memory. Things happen, are absorbed and become memories, but over time the process flattens out and forms a single whole. Several events become one. She feels that her life is a big lump, where the abuse and assaults have become one single event that in turn became an experience, that in turn became a realisation.
There is no before, nor is there any after.
What used to exist in her that is no longer there?
What was it she used to be able to see, but can’t see any longer? She’s tried to find new ways to develop her personality. Not as an alternative or a complement, but as an entirely new being. Unconditional acceptance.
She cuts away at the thin skin that separates her from madness. Nothing started with me, she thinks. Nothing started in me. I am dead fruit, slowly going rotten.
My life consists of a long sequence of moments, one after the other, like a collection of related facts that are all subtly different.
Suddenly she feels an outsider’s perception and self-awareness.
Gamla Stan – Stockholm’s Old Town
FOR THE FIRST time in his new country Gao Lian from Wuhan is walking through Stockholm on his own. From the apartment on Borgm?stargatan he goes down the slippery stone steps on Klippgatan. He crosses Folkungagatan, then goes up the steps towards Ersta Hospital.
On Fj?llgatan he sits down on a bench and looks out over Stockholm. Below him there are big passenger ferries, and out in the water small yachts bob up and down. To his left he can see Gamla stan and the palace.
The swallows crying as they dive for insects are the same birds that lived under the eaves at home in Wuhan.
The smell is the same too, even if it’s cleaner here.
He crosses the bridge to Gamla stan. Curious, he listens to the strange language and thinks it sounds like the people around him are singing their words. The new language feels friendly, as if made for creating beautiful poetry, and he wonders what it sounds like when these people get angry.
He spends several hours walking through the maze of narrow streets and alleys, and after a while he begins to get his bearings and can find his way to wherever he wants to go without any problem. When dusk falls he has a clear internal map of the little city between the bridges. He will come back here, and it will be his starting point when he explores other parts of the city. He walks home up G?tgatan until he reaches Sk?negatan, where he turns left and continues until he reaches the apartment.
He finds the fair-haired woman inside the soft, dark room. She’s lying knocked out on the floor, and he can see from her eyes that she’s a long way away. He bends over and kisses her feet, then gets undressed.
Before he lies down beside her he carefully folds his outfit the way she has shown him so many times. He closes his eyes and waits for the angel to give him instructions.
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
SOFIA ZETTERLUND’S HAIR is still wet when the phone rings.
‘Victoria Bergman?’ an unfamiliar voice asks.
‘Who wants to know?’ she replies with exaggerated suspicion, even though she knows perfectly well that they would contact her sooner or later.
‘I’m calling from the police in V?rmd?, and I’m trying to get in touch with a Victoria Bergman. Is that you?’
‘Yes, it’s me. What’s this about?’ She tries to sound as worried as she imagines anyone would if the police were to call them late one evening.
‘Are you the daughter of Bengt and Birgitta Bergman from Grisslinge in V?rmd??’
‘Yes, I am … Has something happened? What’s this about?’ She’s worked herself up to the point where for a few seconds she feels genuinely worried. As if she has stepped outside herself and doesn’t actually know what’s happened.
‘My name is G?ran Andersson. I’ve been trying to get hold of you but I haven’t been able to locate an address.’