“Agneta?” he said again. He checked the bedroom, the guest room. He opened all of the doors. Their bed was made, her toiletries neatly replaced in the bathroom. A coat, not unlike the one she had worn that morning, hung stiffly on the dark cherrywood chair she liked to face the east-facing window. He checked the chair though he could see even from behind that she was not in it.
Agneta was not in the apartment, or if she were she was hiding from him, playing a cruel trick the reason for which he could not recall or perhaps had not ever known. Her absence meant something to him but he did not know what. The radio grew louder with every room he searched and every room that was empty.
In the window opposite the kitchen, he watched the sky lose its color. He walked toward this, into the darkened living room, and stood at the window. The sun reflected brighter and brighter in the windows of the building across the courtyard. Color returned to the sky as if it had been exhaled onto it. Each of the windows lit up sharply, a wall of white glass and yellow stucco. Daylight filled the room around him. He squinted his eyes against the light and saw only shapes. The shapes were unfamiliar, both too large and too small. He turned and moved away from the window, toward the dark opening of what he hoped was a door. A piece of furniture, a couch or the edge of a table, brushed against his leg. He reached out his hands, lurched forward, and felt no evidence of what he knew had once existed behind him.
To God Belongs What He Has Taken
Marie buys her morning coffee at the convenience store on the corner of her block. One of the men who works there is named Ahmed. He is Iraqi. When he laughs, which he does often, his enormous belly shakes. She likes Ahmed. She’s been buying her coffee from him since she’s lived on this block, almost two years. In a week, the sale on her apartment, her first, will be final and she and her daughter Tove will move in with Lennart. Marie has been marking this change by counting down the days until she will no longer buy her coffee from Ahmed’s store. Lennart’s grandfather died two weeks ago and Lennart inherited the big apartment on Kungsholmen. There was room for all of them. Sometimes Lennart says he wants children of his own, but Marie isn’t sure she wants to go through raising another child. Counting the years she was traveling and Lennart was abroad with work and they were not together, she and Lennart have been in love, more or less, for fifteen years.
It’s a very cold Monday in April. She goes to the store to buy her coffee on her way to work. She purposefully avoids the pastries aligned in neat rows in a glass case near the register. Her hands are cold and her fingers ache. She wraps her hands around the warm cup.
There is a new man behind the counter, whom she has never seen before. This new man is not as old, nor is he as fat, as Ahmed. He does not have the same kind eyes or funny, toothy smile. “Where is Ahmed?” she asks the new man.
“You haven’t heard,” he says.
“No,” she says.
“Ahmed died on Saturday,” he says. “To God belongs what he has taken.” He points to his chest. “Heart attack.”
Marie touches her fingertips to her throat. “Oh no,” she says. “I’m so sorry.” Just above the man’s left nipple, the outline of which she can see very clearly beneath his shiny red shirt, he is wearing a name tag that reads, Ahmed. Below that, the name of the store curls in tight embroidered circles. This must be Ahmed’s son, she thinks. “Were you,” she says, “I mean, are you related to him? I’m so sorry,” she says before he can answer.
“No no no,” the new Ahmed says. “I only work here.” He smiles. Marie smiles back. Then the man turns serious. “He appreciated all his customers,” he says. It’s a strange thing to say and the way he says it sounds rehearsed and stiff.
“I liked him too,” Marie says. She tries to pay for her coffee but Ahmed puts his hands, palm down, on the counter. “A thank you,” he says. The doorbell jingles and a new customer enters the store. It’s another regular, a woman Marie recognizes. Marie is struck by a sentimental jolt. He’s dead, she nearly says, nearly takes the woman by the arm. He’s gone. It’s the sort of tidy, packaged emotion one sees on television or in films, nothing more than a suggestion of real emotion. The feeling darts through her and passes quickly.
Marie sees the woman daily at the store. And they often take the same train into the city. The woman gets off one stop before Marie, at Odenplan. She’s never talked to the woman, though once they sat across from each other on the metro and shared a smile when a young man sitting next to Marie said loudly into his telephone in a voice almost spilling over into a sob, “I don’t want to fuck you and forget about you either!” Marie also sees the woman some evenings at the park near the shopping center, where the woman often comes with a dog, a large one, a Great Dane, Marie thinks, that trots along obediently behind the woman. She has seen the woman buying cards and flowers at the florist in the square close to the metro station. She’s never seen the woman with a man, nor another woman for that matter, but she has seen the woman arm in arm with a much older woman at the pharmacist, at Systembolaget, at the post office, once at the supermarket. Marie has imagined a life for the woman, of course. Aging mother, no children, good job, civil servant perhaps. She travels frequently to places Marie has always wanted to visit, countries that are warm in winter — Chile, Vietnam, or Papua New Guinea.
She is standing in the way of a third customer, who, she sees as she follows Ahmed’s gentle nod, is trying to pay for a bottle of water. “Excuse me,” this third customer says. “Sorry,” he says and pushes, politely, past Marie to the counter.
Perhaps they even look alike, this woman and Marie. Marie watches the woman at the coffee station. The woman turns to retrieve the milk from the cooler. In profile, they are different. The woman is far more delicate-faced than Marie is. She is taller, broader across the shoulders, but even in the coat she is wearing, obviously thin. Thinner than Marie. The woman is pretty and in spite of herself, Marie feels a little embarrassed to compare herself to the woman.
The third customer takes his change from Ahmed. He stiffly places the bills in his wallet and the coins in the coin pocket on the front of his wallet. By the time he has finished this, the woman has approached the register to pay for her coffee. The train Marie has planned to take leaves in ten minutes. It’s an easy walk to the station and she prefers to wait here, where she can shorten her time spent in the cold. The outdoor platform is raised, and the wind, directed by rows of tall apartment blocks on either side, whips and stings its way from one end of the platform to the other. Marie moves close to the door but does not leave. Outside, there is still ice and a thin dusting of snow in the shadows. She’s going to miss this neighborhood. It has been good to her and to her daughter. Her father thinks she’s making a poor decision moving in with Lennart. She’s crazy to sell her place and get out of the real estate market. Every time they speak he tells her this. Reinvest whatever money you make on the sale in a new apartment. Otherwise the taxes will wipe out whatever profits you may have made. It’s silly to work so hard for something and then give it up just like that. He often frames his concerns for her personal life in economic terms. In truth, she appreciates his advice, though she tells him, as often as he offers it, that she is old enough to make her own decisions. This is what she is supposed to say and so it is what she says, though she wishes she more often did what she wanted rather than what was expected.
Marie hears the woman say, “I’m sorry to hear that. Ahmed was a sweet man.”