More Bitter Than Death: A Novel Part 22

The dark, lacquered wood panels reflect the gleam of the candles. Through the beautiful old windows I can see a few frozen Sodermalm residents pa.s.sing in the darkness.

Aina nods at me over her beer.

"They want to have a few more sessions. I think they want some kind of closure. Besides, I think everyone needs to talk about what happened."

"Well, then I guess that's what we'll do," I say. "Oh, hey, um . . . there's something else."

Aina looks up, concerned. "What?"

"Malin came to see me at my house," I tell her.

"She went to see you at your house? Why?" Aina looks at me, shocked, puzzled.

"To tell me something. Did you know that Susanne Olsson was one of the people who gave her rapist an alibi?"

"The same Susanne Olsson? The woman that was murdered?"

"The very one."

"Are you kidding?"

"Absolutely not. I was at the police station too, talking about this."

"The police station? Why?"

"I a.s.sume it's because they think Malin might have some sort of motive to kill Susanne, at least in theory."

"Oh my G.o.d, is that what they think?" Aina asks.

"The officer didn't say that straight out, but obviously they have to look into her now."

"But the killer was a man, wasn't it?"

"Yeah. I don't know. I just thought you'd want to know."

"Do the other women in the group know about this? Does Kattis know about this?" Aina asks.

"I shouldn't think so. Malin had a really hard time talking about it."

Aina says, "I did say that Malin was disturbed, didn't I?"

I study Aina, sitting there across from me, her jaws clenched, her arms crossed in front of her chest, and say, "You know sometimes I think you can be a little . . ."

"What? Say it. Harsh?"

"Yeah. Maybe."

I feel the heat rush to my cheeks. Suddenly losing all desire to drink my soda, I push the gla.s.s aside. I don't want to talk about Malin anymore, don't want to think about all the stuff that has happened since she and all the other women in the group came into our lives. So I ask, "How are things going with that guy of yours?"

Aina relaxes, lowers her hands onto her knees, smiles a little. "That guy of mine? I don't know . . . But it's good. You never thought you'd see this day, right?"

There's almost something triumphant in her voice. I shake my head, thinking that she's right, that I actually doubted she was capable of having a long-term relations.h.i.+p. "I'm happy for you."

She smiles uncertainly and looks at me with those big gray eyes. "To be honest-"

"Yes?"

"It's a little creepy to surrender yourself to another person. I mean, what if something happens to him?" Her eyes cloud over.

"Well, duh, that's the point, isn't it?"

"And, uh, by the way, what's up with that?" Aina asks, pointing at my soda, which is sitting next to me, and I realize she suspects something, that maybe she has for a while. Aina knows me so well, knows that I would never drink anything other than wine after six o'clock. Knows all the excuses I use to get myself what my body needs.

I look at her. She looks serious. "You're not . . . Are you really?"

And I feel a smile involuntarily spreading across my face.

"No way, that's great," she says, and then leaps up, leans over the table, practically knocking over her beer in her hurry to hug me, and I breathe in the honey scent of her hair that I know so well.

"Sometime this spring," I say, almost breathlessly.

She is still smiling but quickly sits back down again. "So wonderful, really. But, uh, what's this going to mean for the office?"

I stare at her blankly. That thought hadn't even occurred to me yet. Compared to the life that is growing inside me, the office has seemed distant and unimportant.

"The office?"

"Uh, yeah. What are we going to do with your patients? Because you weren't planning to keep on working as usual, were you?"

"I don't know-"

"And then there's the rent; if you're not working, Sven and I are going to have to cover that on our own. Or what were you thinking?" A wrinkle appears between Aina's eyebrows and she looks worried.

"I haven't really decided what I'm going to do yet."

"Elin isn't exactly free either," she continues, as if she hadn't heard me.

Suddenly I'm filled with a quiet disappointment: what for me is a life-altering event is mostly a practical consideration for Aina. I look at the gla.s.s of soda sitting next to me on the table and think about how I would give almost anything for a gla.s.s of wine.

Just one gla.s.s.

That night I dream about Hillevi again.

She's sitting next to me on the bed and the moonlight is like silver in her hair. Instead of the beautiful black dress she was wearing the last time I saw her, she's wearing a white linen slip. Near her waist a reddish-black spot is growing dangerously large, and I smell the sweet odor of her blood.

She's barefoot and her pretty little feet are dirty, as if she'd come in from outside, had been walking along the sh.o.r.e.

She looks worried. Those dark eyes wander over my body as I lie, paralyzed under the covers.

"It's your fault," she says. "It's your fault your fault your fault your fault."

And I can't say anything because my throat has closed up from fear and sorrow. I want to touch her, offer her my hand, my body, as comfort, the only comfort I can give her, but my limbs won't obey.

She pauses for a bit, gazing out my window at the moon and the sea resting heavily around the rocks, studying the frost on the windowpane, contemplating its fernlike pattern.

"If I hadn't come to see you," she whispers, moving her hand to her stomach, and I see the blood turning it red. "If I hadn't come to see you, I'd be with my children now, wouldn't I? They need me. What's going to happen to them now?"

Her eyes, black and dull like coal, look at me. I scream and scream, but no sound comes out. Instead I feel how her cold blood spreads around my body, forming a little pool on my mattress.

"Promise me you'll help my kids," she says, and suddenly the paralysis abates and I realize I'm nodding at her.

She gives me a quick nod back and then is gone.

The hill leading up to Soder Hospital feels unusually steep and hard to climb. Two elderly ladies with canes pa.s.s us quickly and continue at a rapid clip toward Sachsska Children's Hospital. I'm able to do less and less. It's as if I've come down with some sort of serious illness. The midwife promised me it's just pregnancy, that this is normal.

That everything is normal.

Markus is in high spirits, eager, talking nonstop, skipping around from topic to topic: work, Christmas, his parents' house in Skellefte, where his dad is installing geothermal heat. I respond to him in monosyllables, trying to listen, but I can't focus. My thoughts keep going back to the last ultrasound I had at Soder Hospital. To that somber, unapologetic doctor. The news that the baby was so severely deformed it couldn't survive.

The unthinkable.

What was supposed to be Stefan's and my first moment with our unborn baby turned into a nightmare of Latin words, diagnoses, attempts to explain why-why our baby was deformed, why our baby wasn't going to be able to survive.

Now here I am, walking that same path with another man, the same sidewalks, same buildings, same s.h.i.+ny, gray facades. Everything is the same, and yet the world is different.

Markus has stopped talking and looks at me attentively. He looks so hopelessly young, with his long hair messy and wet from the rain, which continues to fall without stopping from those heavy clouds above us.

"Is this hard?" Markus's eyes are full of worry and compa.s.sion. I'm touched and I appreciate it, but at the same time I'm having trouble dealing with his supportive att.i.tude. I don't want to think of myself as weak and needy.

"Yeah, a little."

We enter through the gla.s.s door on the side, the one that leads to the women's clinic. The woman at the reception desk asks if we're here for an ultrasound or a delivery. My unease intensifies. My heart is pounding hard and fast in my chest and I feel like I'm having trouble breathing, getting enough air. I really want a gla.s.s of wine. Of course that's impossible. No wine at all, that's the promise. No wine, no alcohol. Not even a beer.

We take a seat on the government-issue chairs in the waiting room and I look around at the other people here. A very pregnant woman is eating an apple and reading a magazine. She has her shoes off and her feet up on the chair across from her. Her feet are swollen and I'm surprised she can even walk on them. A young couple is sitting with a child on their laps reading books. The child points to something in the book and then laughs in delight. The parents look at each other and they laugh too; their intimacy is palpable.

A tall woman in green hospital scrubs comes over to us. Her dark hair is combed back and held up with a tortoisesh.e.l.l hair clip. She has a thin leather choker around her neck with a black charm that looks African. I wonder if she's a radiologist or an ultrasound technician or a nurse or a midwife. Are all obstetrics nurses earthy and alternative? Do they prefer to be called midwives and teach breathing techniques and natural childbirth coping mechanisms, or do some of them support hospital births and pain medication?

The woman introduces herself as Helena and explains that she is going to perform today's exam. We follow her down the corridor into a small, stuffy exam room. It's so cramped there's hardly room for three people. The room is warm, too warm. My struggle to breathe gets worse and I feel the panic taking over.

I lie down on a table covered with crinkly paper and pull my jeans down a little. Markus sits in a chair by my head.

On the wall in front of us is a screen.

Helena explains in great detail, like a teacher, what the purpose of the ultrasound exam is, that they're looking at the fetus's organs, and after that they'll measure the head to determine its age and growth.

"Is this your first child?" Helena asks, smiling as she smears clear goo on my abdomen, unaware of the weight of her question.

"It's my first child, so I'm a novice," Markus says, coming to my rescue. "Why are you putting goop on Siri's stomach?"

He continues to engage the midwife in small talk while I close my eyes and focus on my breathing. I try to concentrate on being present, ignore the anxiety. I hear Helena's voice, hear her describing what she sees on the screen, which is turned toward her and away from us so we can't interpret or misinterpret the pictures. I hear her words, her calm voice. I hear, but I can't put what she's saying together into anything comprehensible.

"And then maybe you'd like to take a peek?" Helena carefully touches my shoulder and I open my eyes. The screen in front of us is on now and showing a black-and-white image. Suddenly the white part turns into a body. Uneven shadows turn into a torso, arms, and legs. A little head appears on the screen. I can't hear what Helena is saying anymore. I'm just looking at the baby who's moving, impatient, nervous.

"I'm measuring the head and the femur to determine the approximate age. It looks like you're in week eighteen."

Helena smiles, and looks at me to check if that's what I had thought. I realize I haven't said a word since I introduced myself to her.

"Week eighteen?" I'm surprised. Almost half the pregnancy is over without my hardly even being aware of it. I haven't told anyone besides Markus and Aina, not my parents, not my sisters. I was so sure that this pregnancy too would end in pain and loss that I tried to pretend it didn't exist.

"Week eighteen," Helena repeats, looking down at her keyboard and entering the numbers. Then she looks up again. "That means you'll be parents around the twenty-eighth of April next year."

I look at the screen again, see the silhouette of the baby, look at Markus. My heart is still pounding, hard and fast, but the fear has abated and is now replaced by something else.

Hope?

Markus is sitting in the armchair, which he's pulled over to the TV, controller in his hand. There's some kind of virtual battle on the screen. I have a hard time understanding the appeal of this game. Some days I want to call it immature, but I realize that I have many traits that Markus accepts and puts up with and that he too needs s.p.a.ce for his interests.

Several empty moving boxes are leaning against the wall in the living room and I realize that he has brought some of his things from his apartment, that he is beginning to make himself at home. I unlace my knee-high boots and toss the rain-soaked jacket and shawl over a chair in the little entry hall.

"Let me just finish this round," Markus says, and keeps shooting away at his virtual enemy on the other side of the screen with great concentration.

"Sure," I say, picking up the cardboard boxes filled with food and heading into the kitchen. I start unpacking them and putting things away into the fridge or the freezer. I'm struck by how commonplace and natural everything feels and by the fact that I like this feeling. I hear Markus curse from the living room. The game is over and obviously he lost.

"Do you want some help?" he asks. Markus comes into the kitchen, walks over, and gives me a light peck on the cheek. The lost battle seems forgotten. He caresses my shoulder.