Let The Old Dreams Die Part 18

Matte rewound a few seconds, pressed Play.

The radio voices...the words...

I could hear it clearly this time. I was able to make out the words. The voice shouting in the background was calling: 'All you children! Come in! Welcome!'

Matte stopped the tape, pressed the eject b.u.t.ton, took out the tape and showed it to me.

'This is the tape I got from her. The same one.'

'But...what does it mean?'

Matte came and sat down in the armchair again, placing the tape on the table next to the photograph. He sat there for a while with his hands on his knees, not speaking. Then he pointed at the photograph.

'I'd hoped that would confirm what I've been thinking. And it has.'

I leaned forward, but Matte placed his hand over the photograph.

'Wait. One thing at a time. So eventually I reached her. And as I said: I no longer had any thoughts. So I prodded her in the back. And the same thing happened as in school. No reaction. But I wasn't afraid anymore, I was...nothing. So I walked around her and looked at her face. She had a face, but...how can I put this...she wasn't in it. She wasn't there. It was quite dark in the room by this stage, just the lights from outside s.h.i.+ning in, but I looked at her eyes and it was as if they were made of gla.s.s. Open. But empty. And then...I don't know why I did it, but it was probably for the same reason as a dog licks its b.a.l.l.s.'

'Which is?'

'Because it can. So...I unb.u.t.toned her blouse to...to see what she looked like. Or to get a reaction. I don't know. I was pretty much out of it.'

Matte pointed to several spots on his chest, his stomach.

'There were holes. Spread irregularly all over this part of her body. Twelve holes, as deep and wide as...I could get two fingers inside.'

'Matte. For G.o.d's sake, that's...'

'I know. I know. Do you think I don't know? But there's nothing I can do about it. That's the way it was. I examined her head. There were a couple of holes there too. There were probably more, but by that stage I'd lost it completely. What happened next...I don't remember at all.'

Matte hadn't drunk any tea. Now he filled his cup with the tepid liquid in the pot and knocked it back in one go. I noticed that his hand was shaking. He pointed at the photograph.

'Now you can look. Use the magnifying gla.s.s. Look at her feet. Hang on.'

He got up and switched on the main light, then stood with his arms folded, looking at me encouragingly. I picked up the magnifying gla.s.s and studied the photograph.

She was wearing the blouse with the big leaves on it. The only odd things I could remember about her were that vaguely unpleasant feeling, and the fact that she always wore the same clothes. And then of course there was the business with the tape, but then that was...

It's possible to rig that kind of thing, of course. If you want to. But why?

I looked at her feet. There was nothing strange about her feet. Ordinary feet in a pair of white trainers. Matte's gaze was burning into the back of my neck.

I realised he was crazy, one way or another. He'd got some kind of fixed idea, had-what's it called?-rationalised something he'd done, whatever it might be. Created a reason.

I shook my head slowly.

'Matte, I-'

'Look at the gra.s.s. Underneath her feet.'

I looked at the gra.s.s underneath her feet. Then I looked at the gra.s.s under Ulrika's, Kenneth's, Staffan's and my own feet. Then I looked at the gra.s.s under her feet again.

It was standing up.

The gra.s.s underneath our feet was flattened down, of course. Underneath hers it was standing up. As if she weighed nothing.

Something round and sticky descended through my throat and landed in my stomach. This was my photograph. It had been down in my cellar. There wasn't a cat in h.e.l.l's chance that anyone could have tampered with it, as someone could have tampered with the tape.

As if he had read my thoughts, Matte picked up the tape and shook it demonstratively.

'You could take this to anyone who's an expert in that kind of thing, and he'd tell you n.o.body has done anything to this tape in twenty years.'

'But...is that voice...her voice on the original?'

My own voice sounded weird, as if I were speaking through a piece of fabric. Matte shook his head.

'No. I've checked. The other sounds are there, the other voices, but that particular voice...on the original it's a man's voice. But the interesting thing, the really interesting thing...you saw the gra.s.s?'

I nodded and whispered, 'What did you do?'

Matte waved the question away.

'I'm getting to the interesting bit. I've got a theory, you know. As you've perhaps realised I've spent that last twenty years in different...places. In order to become whole, or whatever it is you're supposed to become. Functioning. I saw the way you looked at my apartment when you arrived, and no, I haven't a clue. I've just tried to... simulate a life.

'But I've met a lot of people in the places where I've been. And Vera isn't the only one, let me tell you. I think she was quite special because of her extreme...incompleteness. But they're everywhere. People who are lacking something. Or a lot of things. And I don't even know if they are people, they might be something else.

'In fact, they probably are something else. They're here instead of someone else, they slip in through that gap and...I'm not sure, but I think there are more and more of them around.

'I checked with the school last week, by the way. It took a while and they weren't exactly thrilled about it, but they dug out lists of everyone who's worked there since the place was built. Teachers, subst.i.tute teachers, the lot. Salary records. And apart from a headmistress at the end of the fifties, no one called Vera has ever worked in that school. Not even for one day.

'I presume they'd forgotten to book a subst.i.tute teacher for us, and she slipped in through the gap. That's what I think.'

I picked up the magnifying gla.s.s again, looked at the photograph. There was no doubt about it. Now that I knew, it just looked insane: the gra.s.s standing up under her feet, the shadows falling differently around her.

I just couldn't take it in. I scrubbed my face hard with my hands, as if to rub away a sticky crust.

'What do you mean? What do you mean, more and more of them? Why are there more and more of them?'

'Why does a dog lick its b.a.l.l.s?'

'Because it can.'

'Yes.'

Matte gestured towards the window.

'Because they can. Out there...You'll have to excuse me. I'm so used to thinking about the world in general as out there. But out there, everything is based on the idea that things are interchangeable, isn't it? Temporary staff, short-term relations.h.i.+ps, subst.i.tutes, subst.i.tutes, subst.i.tutes. I'm not moralising, it's just a fact. Someone disappears, someone else turns up instead. All the time. s.p.a.ces appear, gaps, and then...then they just slide in. But do you know what the worst thing is? They themselves don't know.'

'Don't know what?'

'That they're subst.i.tutes. They think they're people. Of course they're not usually missing a finger or an ear, it's usually something else. Something else is missing. Something is lacking. Less obvious than a finger, but equally perceptible. So we take our medication, we try-'

'We?'

'Yes, we. What's to say that you and I aren't subst.i.tutes too? How much is left of us? My illness, my so-called illness...'

Matte sighed and sank down in the armchair. He looked so small. It was as if the armchair threatened to swallow him up. If he let go the black, worn imitation leather would wrap itself around him. I felt the same thing, and straightened up. If I stayed where I was I would disappear. Before I had time to get to my feet, Matte said, 'Mental illness is about not being able to see the world as it is. My illness... the root of my illness, the reason I take medication, the experience I have to suppress, is that it's already happened.'

'What's already happened?'

'The subst.i.tutes have already taken over. There are no people left anymore. And if you look at life in that way, it becomes pretty... pointless. There will be nothing left.'

I stood up. I couldn't listen to this any longer.

'Matte. I have to go home. My son is coming tomorrow, and it's...I've got a few things to sort out.'

'I understand. Thanks for coming.'

I wanted to turn around, go into the hallway, pick up my coat and then walk or run to the subway station. But it wasn't finished. My feet refused to move. When Matte noticed that I was still standing there, he looked up at me, and his face was utterly naked. He asked, 'Do you believe me?'

The answer wouldn't come. There was both a yes and a no, in fact, and neither of them wanted to come out. Instead the question came again.

'What did you do?'

Matte shook his head slowly, and the shadow of a smile pa.s.sed over his lips.

'It doesn't matter. I must have...destroyed it in some way. With a cupboard door, perhaps. From the kitchen. I remember the edges against the palms of my hands, unhooking a cupboard door. Yellow. A yellow cupboard door, although it looked more like...orange in the darkness. I remember that. There was nothing there, you see. So I unhooked a kitchen door. I remember that. Then nothing. But I think I must have destroyed it...her in some way. The way they treated me afterwards would suggest that's what happened. And then she moved in there.'

Matte waved in the direction of the table.

'Moved in where?'

'Into the music. Sorry. I didn't say, did I. That tape...I listened to it several times before...before this happened. And her voice wasn't there then. It was only afterwards, after I'd...done it that she moved in. That her voice appeared.'

Matte picked up the tape, twisting it between his fingers and looking at it as if he were contemplating the only memento of a much-loved relative.

'That's what was left. Of her.'

There was nothing more to say. As I stood in the hallway putting on my coat, Matte came up to me with the photograph in his hand.

'Can I keep this?'

I looked at the photograph, at Matte. In spite of everything, it was the only souvenir I had of that particular year, and as I said: I'm a collector. Matte was looking intently at me, and I gazed into two deep shafts.

'Please?'

I nodded. Not really because I wanted to be kind, but because I just wanted to get out of there. I nodded and held out my hand to say goodbye. Matte clasped the photograph to his heart with his left hand, held out his right. We said goodbye.

When I got out onto the street I stood for a long time looking up at Matte's window. One apartment among twenty-four others in the same block, one apartment block among several others. A s.p.a.ce with temporary objects arranged in it. A shudder pa.s.sed through my body and I hurried off towards the warmth and movement of the subway.

On the platform the cold fluorescent light poured down on a man here, a woman there, another man over there, waiting with his hands pushed deep in his pockets. The men were standing still, the woman walking the short distance back and forth, back and forth.

The train arrived. Six blue carriages pulled in alongside the platform. Stopped.

The people inside the carriages were gazing into s.p.a.ce or looking down at their newspapers or out into the blackness beyond the window. No one was moving.

Eternal / Love.

Death is just walking out of a door

leaving a room full of light

in a pair of eyes.

Mia Ajvide.

Anna and Josef really loved each other. Eight years they had been together, and all the indications were that things would stay that way until death parted them. If they had to be apart for a day or more because of work or other circ.u.mstances, they both had the feeling they were in the wrong place. Life became insubstantial, unreal.

They had both grown up in Stockholm, and before they met they had each had quite an intense social life-bars, clubs, short-term relations.h.i.+ps. Two years into their own relations.h.i.+p they went through their address books. Half the names they couldn't even put a face to; nine out of every ten phone numbers were redundant. They wrote the important ones in a new book and threw away the old ones.

In November the following year Josef's father had a heart attack when he jumped into the sea from the jetty after a sauna. When the grief had stopped sprawling and stabbing and settled in his chest, his father's summer cottage, made warm and cosy for winter use, was waiting there like an opportunity. No loans, no rent.

Most of what they needed they found in each other, so why would they need Stockholm? And in any case, Sgviken was only a hundred kilometres from the capital if they were in the mood for a change.

They had a farewell party, inviting the remaining ten per cent of the names in their address book, said You must come and see us and I mean it's not as if we're moving to a different part of the world, in spite of the fact that they knew that was exactly what they were doing.

After a couple of years, things were going well. Josef, who was a qualified childcare worker, had found a job at a nursery in Norrtalje, and Anna had converted the garage into a studio where she worked during the day. One week she painted motifs from the archipelago on driftwood which she could sell to summer visitors, the next she painted pictures she couldn't sell to anyone, as she put it herself.

In the evenings they read aloud to each other, drank wine. Watched TV. Or sat and talked. They rarely had visitors, but when it did happen they thought it was great when the visitors arrived and lovely when they left.

Naturally they quarrelled and had their darker moments. Like when they were due to attend a family party at Anna's parents' house. Josef took himself off in his boat with his fis.h.i.+ng rod, returning half an hour after the time they had planned to leave. When he got in the car he stank of fish guts. They sat in silence for fifty kilometres. Anna made a point of pus.h.i.+ng the old Toyota to a hundred and forty on the motorway; it rattled and roared as if they were inside a tumble dryer. Then they ran out of petrol. Anna had been so tense she had forgotten to fill up.

They sat there at the side of the road with their arms tightly folded. Neither of them wanted to start, because once they did start it was going to take a long time. Anna's family, Josef's reluctance. How he hated feeling forced into things. How she hated having to force him. And so on. Both of them were very angry: messy black clouds in their heads. Both of them were thinking: I want a divorce. This isn't how it should be. Neither of them meant it. Everything was b.l.o.o.d.y awful and really difficult, but this was where they were meant to be. They would bicker over it all and sort things out yet again. There was no alternative.

They started quarrelling as they set off to fetch some petrol, carried on afterwards. Fifty kilometres, a hundred kilometres. Outside Norrkoping came the first laughter. In Linkoping they bought new trousers for Josef. They arrived at the party three hours late, and as usual everybody commented on how happy they seemed together. Anna said seriously, 'It's because we're both on the same antidepressants,' and only Josef laughed.