‘Yes, that’s them.’
‘They’re two of my best friends.’
‘Are they?’
‘Yes, but they fight like cat and dog. You can’t have them in the same room any more.’
‘So you know them separately?’
‘Yes, you could put it like that.’
‘I was impressed by you as well,’ she said.
‘By me?’
‘Yes. Ingmar Lemhagen was talking about your book a long time before you came. And that was all he wanted to talk about when we were there.’
Another silence.
She got up and headed for the toilet.
It was hopeless, I thought. What idiotic things was I coming up with? But what else could you say?
What the hell did people talk about, actually?
The coffee machine hissed and sputtered. A long queue of people with impatient body language stood at the bar. It was grey outside. The grass in the park below was yellow and wet.
She returned and sat down.
‘What do you do during the day? Have you started to get to know the town?’
I shook my head.
‘Only a bit. No, I write. And then I swim in the pool at Medborgarplatsen every day.’
‘Do you? I swim there too. Not every day, but almost.’
We smiled at each other.
I took out my mobile and checked the time.
‘I’m afraid I’ll have to go soon,’ I said.
She nodded. ‘But we can meet again, can’t we?’
‘Yes, we can. When?’
She shrugged. ‘You can just ring me, can’t you?’
‘Yep.’
I put the manuscript and the mobile phone in my bag, and got up.
‘I’ll phone you then. Nice to see you again!’
‘Hej då,’ she said. Bye.
Bag in hand, I strode down the street, alongside the park and into the broad avenue where the flat was. Nothing had changed, we hadn’t changed anything; when we took our leave it was all as it was before we met.
But what had I been expecting?
We weren’t going anywhere after all.
I hadn’t asked about flats, either. Or contacts. Nothing.
I was fat as well.
After arriving home I lay back on the water bed and studied the ceiling. She had been completely different. She was almost like a different person.
At Biskops-Arnö perhaps the most striking feature of her personality had been her determination to go as far as she had to, which I had sensed at once and was deeply attracted by. It had disappeared. The hardness, bordering on ruthlessness, yet as fragile as glass, was gone too. There was still something fragile about her, but in a different way, this time I hadn’t thought that she could be crushed or go to pieces, as I had then. Now her fragility was joined by a softness, and her indifferent side, which said you’ll never get close to me, had changed. She was shy but somehow also open. Hadn’t there been something open about her?
The autumn after we had been to Biskops-Arnö she had got together with Arve, and through him I had heard what happened to her in the winter and spring. She had gone through a manic-depressive phase, was eventually admitted to a psychiatric hospital, that was all I knew. During the manic periods she had rung me twice to ask if I could get hold of Arve. I did both times, asked his friends to tell him to call me, and when he did I could hear he was disappointed it was actually Linda trying to contact him. And once she rang just to talk to me, it was six o’clock in the morning, she told me she was about to begin a creative writing course, and was leaving for Gothenburg in an hour. Tonje was awake in the bedroom, wondering who would ring at this crazy hour, I said, Linda, you know, the Swede I met, who’s with Arne. Why would she ring you? Tonje asked, no idea, I said, think she’s going through a manic-depressive phase.
We couldn’t talk about any of this.
And if we couldn’t talk about this, we couldn’t talk about anything.
What was the point of sitting there and saying hi, hi, erm, erm, how are you?
I closed my eyes and tried to picture her.
Had I felt anything for her?
No.
Or yes, I liked her and perhaps I felt some tenderness for her, after all that had happened, but there was no more to it than that. The rest I had put behind me, quite definitely.
Best like that.
I got up, stuffed my trunks, a towel and some shampoo in a bag, put on my jacket and walked to Medborgarplatsen, into Forsgrénska Badet, which was almost empty at this time of day, changed, entered the swimming hall, onto the block and dived in. I swam a thousand metres beneath the pale March light that fell in through the large window at the end, to and fro, up and down, under the water, over the water, without thinking about anything but the number of metres, the number of minutes, all while trying to perform the strokes as perfectly as possible.
Afterwards I went to the sauna, thought about the time I tried to write short stories based on small ideas, like a man with a prosthetic limb in the swimming pool changing room, without knowing what, why or how.
What had been the big idea?
A man tied to a chair in a room, in a flat, somewhere in Bergen, in the end shot through the head, dead, but still alive in the text, an ego that lasted well into its funeral and the grave.
Gesticulating, that was what I had been doing.
And for so long.
I wiped the sweat from my brow with the towel, looked down at the rolls of fat sagging from my stomach. Pale and fat and stupid.
But in Stockholm!
I got up, went to the showers and stood under one.
I knew no one here. I was utterly free.
If I left Tonje, if this was the path I was to take, I could stay here for a month or two, perhaps all summer, and then go to… well, wherever I felt like going. Buenos Aires. Tokyo. New York. Go down to South Africa and take the train to Lake Victoria. Or Moscow, why not? That would be fantastic.
I closed my eyes and soaped my hair. Rinsed it, went in and opened my locker, dressed.
I was free if I wanted to be.
I didn’t need to write any more.
I put the towel and my wet shorts in the bag, went out into the grey chilly day, to Saluhallen, the food hall, where I had a ciabatta roll leaning against a counter. Went home, tried to write a little while hoping that Geir would come earlier than he had said. Went to bed and watched TV, an American soap, fell asleep.
When I woke it was dark outside. Someone was knocking at the door.
I opened up, it was Geir, we shook hands.
‘Well?’ he said. ‘How was it?’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘Where shall we go?’
Geir shrugged while walking round and inspecting all the ornaments inside, stopping in front of the bookshelves and turning.
‘Isn’t it strange that you find the same books everywhere you go? I mean, she’s around twenty-five, isn’t she? Works at Ordfront, lives in Söder? But these are the books she’s got and no others.’
‘Yes, very strange,’ I said. ‘Where shall we go? Guldapan? Kvarnen? Pelikanen?’
‘Not Kvarnen at any rate. Guldapan maybe? Are you hungry?’
I nodded.
‘Let’s go there. The food’s not bad. Good chicken.’
Outside, it felt as if it could start snowing at any moment. Cold and raw and damp.
‘Come on then,’ Geir said as we strode along. ‘Good in what way?’
‘We met, chatted and left. That’s pretty much how it was.’
‘Was she how you remembered her?’
‘We-ell, bit different maybe.’
‘In what way?’
‘How many times are you going to ask that?’
‘I really mean it. What did you feel when you saw her?’
‘Less than I thought I would.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Why? What sort of sodding question is that? How can I know? I feel what I feel. It’s not possible to identify every tiny fluctuation of the soul, if that’s what you believe.’