Let The Old Dreams Die Part 11

The key was where she said it would be. There was a cat flap and the cat was out, its food untouched. I put some fresh water in its bowl. When I straightened up after putting the bowl down, I felt dizzy and had to sit on a kitchen chair. I sat there for a while looking around their kitchen. Then I stood up.

There was nothing special in the top drawer. Cutlery. The other drawers also contained various kitchen utensils. Except the bottom one. In there I found a number of bundles of sheets made of a material that most closely resembled papier-mache, except that it was stiff, shiny. I held a sheet up to the light and saw a spider's web pattern of fibres.

I couldn't for the life of me work out what it was or what it might be used for. Perhaps I wouldn't have reacted if there had been just one sheet-something for baking a particular kind of biscuit?-but there were bundles. There must have been a hundred sheets made of this unfamiliar material.

As I crouched there by the drawer I heard a sound, and felt a little shock that ran all the way up from the base of my spine. But it was only the cat. It came in through the cat flap and stood there looking at me. I suppose it was wondering who I was, what I was doing there. Stupidly, I blushed.

I left the kitchen and investigated the utility room. There were eight pairs of Bestpoint men's underpants, the kind you get at the Flygfyren shopping centre. No other brands. La.s.se has lots of different brands of underpants, but this man had found the one he liked and he was sticking to it. I don't remember his name. I want to say Guran, but that's not a name, is it?

During the rest of the week I examined every single corner of the house. I went through the bills they'd paid. Found a whole lot of payments to something called Royal Court. Several thousand kronor over the years. I've looked on the internet, but I can't find a company with that name; all I get are links to royal families in various countries.

I found a gold ring underneath a bundle of cables behind the TV. I couldn't leave it out on the table, so I tucked it under the rug where there was more chance of them finding it. They must have been surprised even so. It's the sort of thing you tell your friends: 'Just imagine...the ring had been missing for four years, then one day I was just going to shake out the rugs...'

They had an impressive collection of razors in the bathroom. Five different kinds, if I remember rightly.

OK. I think you get it. I was being nosey. It gave me great satisfaction while I was doing it. When I got home I didn't feel quite so good. I promised myself I wouldn't do it again. On the first day I also promised G.o.d that I wouldn't do it again. Then I did it anyway, and stopped making promises. I also stopped praying that week.

It might sound as if this is something I've always done, and to a certain extent I suppose it is. I take the opportunity to read people's letters and diaries on the sly, check what's in their bathroom cabinets.

It's bad. I know it's bad. It involves breaking a spoken or unspoken trust. It's a violation. I know. I curse myself for doing it. I've asked G.o.d for help, but he doesn't help me. Perhaps I'm not really interested in people's secrets. Perhaps it's the actual violation I'm after. That's probably worse.

After that week it was a couple of months before anything happened on that front. Johanna was bullied by some older girls at school, and I prayed to G.o.d that it would stop. It stopped.

Perhaps I would have started on-what shall I call it?-phase two earlier if La.s.se hadn't been working nights for a couple of months. That meant he was at home during the day, and could keep an eye on me.

It's only in the light of what happened later that such terminology is justified: 'keep an eye on me'. Things were good between us, me and La.s.se. You couldn't wish for a better husband. He's sensitive, fun, and insists that we share the housework equally. I probably do slightly more anyway, because I have more time. But in principle. He's not good looking, not at all. But then neither am I, as I've been told.

I could have been happy with La.s.se during those months. Sometimes we'd make love during the day. I closed my eyes. He has a pot belly and a lot of hair on his body, particularly around his navel. I closed my eyes and thought of the summer cottages. All those lives just waiting to be discovered, within walking distance.

It's difficult to describe how I felt during that week in Maud's house as I opened cupboards and drawers. It gave me peace while it was going on, perhaps the peace that comes with the awareness of absolute power. Of course I enjoyed giving my imagination free rein (Royal Court, what could that be? That wax paper, what was it used for?), but I won't pretend. I think it's about power.

The problem with the summer cottages was that I didn't have keys. The first time I headed over there with trembling knees, I had no clear idea of what I was going to do. Perhaps that would have been the end of it, if I hadn't immediately found the key to the first cottage I visited. In the guttering.

It was only five houses later that I found another key. I broke into the intervening four. If a spatula in the lock doesn't work, you can usually manage to undo one of the windows from the outside.

The summer cottages were less rewarding than Maud's house. Apart from the occasions when I found photographs, I didn't know what the people looked like, and had no faces to which I could attach whatever I found. Besides which, you don't leave as many clues in a summer cottage. It's cleaned from top to bottom every year, and many personal items are removed.

But you don't need much to spin a tale, if you have the gift. I find an ugly souvenir from Corsica, a Bible with various pa.s.sages underlined and a high-visibility jacket from the national organisation responsible for road maintenance. The picture is clear in my mind.

It happened in January, after the Christmas break. By that time I had been inside perhaps twenty-five houses. If anyone caught me, I would say that the owners had called me and asked me to turn off the water so that the pipes wouldn't freeze. If the owners caught me it would have been slightly more difficult. But it never happened.

Christmas wasn't all that enjoyable. I'd become dependent on my breaking and entering, and the children's Christmas holidays meant I couldn't get away. Oh, it was a lovely Christmas in every way, but I just wasn't really there, I think. La.s.se asked me one day, 'Veronica, what is it you're thinking about all the time?'

'Nothing in particular.'

'It's as if you're not here.'

I don't know. Perhaps looking at all these unfamiliar objects had alienated me from my own life. I looked at my own things, my own loved ones in the same way: a puzzle to be solved, a reality to bring together. Thought about how I would a.n.a.lyse the objects we would leave behind.

It was a relief when normal everyday life returned. On the first day I was alone in the house I neglected my work so that I could go out straight away. I chose a house that looked as if it had been lived in over Christmas, because the paths had been cleared. However, there was a thin covering of snow, so the residents must have gone home.

It was one of the better cottages. The owner had knocked the old house down and built a new one, fairly recently. Picture windows looking out over the garden, and a patio door that was quite easy to force. I moved quickly through the living room, since the large windows meant I could be seen from the road. I just had time to notice that everything in the house looked expensive. Huge sofa, coffee table with interiors magazines aesthetically arranged.

I went into the kitchen. Tiled floor, presumably with under-floor heating. Central island. Drinks shelf with every imaginable kind of liqueur, Cognac, whisky and so on. I sat down and poured myself a small whisky, then rinsed and dried the gla.s.s before putting it away.

The house was a mystery. Everything looked as if it came straight from the pages of Homes and Gardens. Without doubt they had employed an interior designer, and there was nothing personal. Steel utensils hung on hooks above the fan-forced oven with its ceramic hob, and every single thing was in the right place. Even the black granite saltcellar lying on its side looked as though it had been placed like that in order to achieve a certain effect.

I started to get excited as I sat there at the kitchen table. Finally, a decent nut to crack. The life these people lived was so markedly different from mine that I would have to carry out detailed research to build up a picture.

I decided to start with the bedroom. The bedside table is revealing. That's where you find the last things a person puts down before they go to sleep, and the first things they need when they wake up. Along with the bathroom cabinet, it's number one.

However, the bedroom door was locked.

Of all the houses I had gone through, this was the first time I had come across a locked door inside the house. That was the first clue: they locked their bedroom door when they went away. But why?

Of course this made me even more determined to get into the room. By this time my hands were frozen. It was colder inside the house than outside, and my breath formed clouds of vapour. I fumbled with my provisional lock-picking equipment, and bizarrely, couldn't get it open. It should have been a piece of cake. An internal door!

However. The solution was simple. As in many houses, all the doors had been put in at the same time, and I found a key in the kitchen door that fitted the bedroom. I unlocked it.

The only thing I saw was the outline of a double bed and a bundled up duvet. The blinds were drawn and the room lay in darkness. I risked switching on the light.

It wasn't a duvet lying on the bed. It was a man.

I jerked back and almost stumbled in the doorway, but grabbed hold of the frame and regained my balance. I realised at once that the man was dead. His body was chalk white, naked, completely motionless. His p.e.n.i.s hung limply between his legs and something red was sticking up out of his chest.

My immediate impulse was to run away. But I stayed where I was. I'm quite a sensible person, in spite of everything. I realised I couldn't call the police. At least not until I found a phone box and could make an anonymous call. The closest was in Norrtalje.

I approached the bed cautiously. Stopped. I was in the process of destroying evidence that the forensic technicians might be able to find. And what about me? Were my fingerprints on the gla.s.s I'd used, for example, or on the door handle?

Strange how death alters the way we look at things. The body on the bed was worthless, and yet it defined the room around it; the entire house. This was a house that contained death. I crept closer, alert to any possible movement. But the man didn't move. His eyes were closed, his eyelids had a bluish tinge. One arm dangled over the side of the bed, the other was by his side.

I reached out with one index finger and poked his big toe. It had virtually no elasticity. It was as if the body was deep frozen. I could now see that the object sticking out of his chest, directly over the heart, was the handle of a clasp knife. The word Equinox was written on the handle. Equinox is the time of year when day and night are of equal length. I like the word, but have never had the opportunity to use it. Q and X.

I stood there motionless with my arms by my sides, as if standing to attention before the dead man, and tried to work out what was wrong. Something was wrong, something didn't fit. The red, soft rectangle sticking up from the chest was beautiful in some way. An anatomical arrow pointing at the heart, into the heart. It was a beautiful corpse. No blood.

That was it. Exactly. The knife was sticking straight into the heart, but no blood had run down the chest. I checked the sheet at the side. Just as if it had been a fairy tale, there was one drop of blood, just one. It was impossible to understand how that could have happened. Someone must have wiped him clean after...after it had happened.

The man was about my own age. Around thirty-five. He looked like one of those handsome guys at high school who kind of lived in a different world. If you ever danced with them, their eyes were always somewhere else.

His hair was very soft, as if it were freshly washed.

I didn't know how long he had been dead, but the cold had preserved the body intact. I thought about Snow White. The knife was the red apple. The only thing missing was a gla.s.s coffin. I laughed out loud. So I must be the handsome prince, in my dark grey padded jacket.

I pulled on my gloves and opened the drawer in the bedside table. It was empty. I opened the wardrobe. Empty except for a couple of blankets.

Where are his clothes?

The alarm clock next to the bed had stopped at twenty past eleven. I pulled a chair up to the bed, sat down and let my gaze wander over the body.

I have to say it again: he was almost perfect. Muscular, but not over the top. A body moving in H2O, seven letters: swimmer. His jaw-line was well defined, casting a black shadow over his throat in the electric light. His lips could have convinced me that he was alive. Pale and bloodless, yes, but not sunken; they were full, pouting as if he were waiting for the kiss of life. His brow was high and smooth and his blond, medium-length hair was swept back. He was very handsome.

The only thing that spoiled the impression was the hair on his chest. Blond, almost white hair curling down towards his abdomen. Not too much, but enough to be disturbing. And then there was the p.e.n.i.s. The idea was new to me, I've never seen a dead body before, but is there anything more pathetic than a dead man's p.e.n.i.s? So utterly, so mercilessly...unnecessary.

I took one of the blankets out of the wardrobe and spread it over his lower abdomen. I suppose I really should have covered his face as well-something to do with respect.

But I didn't feel any respect. No. Now the initial shock had subsided I felt only...excitement.

'Hi there, you,' I said.

He didn't reply. I would have liked to know his name, so that I could use it. For the time being I decided to call him You. I wasn't scared at all. Perhaps it was the absence of blood, the undisturbed condition of the body that made the whole thing unreal.

I sat with him for a good while. When I left, after checking that there was no one in sight on the road, I left the patio door on the latch.

By the mailboxes I counted back and forth between the houses I knew, and worked out that the man's mailbox was number 354. There was a name too. Svensson. I found it so comical that the man was called Svensson that I started to laugh. I had imagined something along the lines of, oh, I don't know, Delafour, Sander, anything at all, but not Svensson.

Of course there was nothing to indicate that the man on the bed was the owner of the house. I had never seen him before. As I walked home I tried out the name: 'Svensson...Svensson.'

Oh well. It wasn't too bad after all. Could be anybody.

I remember those days, those first days. Wonderful days. Blissful expectation running through my body, like honey. La.s.se noticed the change in me, he said it was as if there was light all around me. Or as if the darkness had ebbed away-same thing, really. I played with the children, I cooked delicious meals. In the evenings, while we were watching TV, I curled up in La.s.se's arms. I loved him because he was simple and imperfect, dirty like me. Another person.

And I was longing to be somewhere else. All the time.

I was afraid of two things: that the people who owned the house would come back, and that the weather would get warmer, begin the thaw.

However, my reasoning was this: either the man on the bed is the person who owns the house, or the people who own the house have something to do with his death. Neither of these alternatives would lead to the man being moved. I know, I know, it wasn't exactly watertight, but that's the way I reasoned in order to calm myself down.

With regard to my other fear, there was nothing to worry about. The weather forecast promised that the cold spell would continue.

So I curled up in La.s.se's arms and smiled at the weatherman as he pointed to his minus signs and his snow flurries. Everything was as it should be.

As soon as the children had gone back to school and La.s.se back to work, I headed over to the house. I was wearing several layers of thin woollen sweaters so that I could cope with remaining still for a long time without suffering too much.

What did I do once I was in there?

It's hard to describe, really. You could call it a confession. I told you everything, and you listened. I looked at you as I talked. You were so good to look at. Like a Greek statue. I caressed you.

No. Not like that. It was pointless, of course, and perhaps that was actually part of the point. I could caress you without it meaning that. I could caress you because you were beautiful, like a statue. I told you how beautiful I thought you were, and that you were mine and mine alone.

Is that sick?

Well yes, I suppose it is. I knew that while I was doing it. I knew I was doing something ugly, something bad. But I said to myself: what crime am I committing? I suppose the closest thing is desecrating a corpse. But how can it be desecration: talking to someone, caressing someone, telling that person how beautiful he is? If that's desecration, then what is love?

Before everything changed there was really only one thing I did that you could regard as overstepping the mark. On the third day I took La.s.se's shaving things with me and shaved off your pubic hair and the hair on your chest. It bothered me so much, all that hair. I call it overstepping the mark, because it's something you would hardly have agreed to, given the option.

But you weren't a person. You were a dead thing, I was the one who had found you, and you looked so much better without all that hair. Completely smooth. No longer almost perfect, but totally perfect.

The knife?

You might think that would spoil the picture, the red handle sticking up out of your chest and breaking the surface of the skin. Equinox. Quite the reverse, in my opinion. It acted like a beauty spot, six letters: mouche. It was all about a fixed point, somewhere for the eye to focus before it moved on to the rest of your beauty.

And, if I'm truthful, I was afraid to pull it out. I mean, I've read the fairy tales. The sword is pulled out of the dead king's body. He turns to stone, crumbles to dust and is gone. So I made a virtue of necessity, called it a mouche and left it where it was.

Your eyes were closed, and I told you everything. I told you things I didn't even know I felt before I met you, found you. The constant sense of unreality, the veil between me and the world. How I would suddenly feel as if Emil and Johanna were dolls, and not mine at all. How I would be able to see La.s.se in bed with X-ray vision, and realise that he consisted of minced beef packed into a bag of skin. A hundred kilos of mince. How I would have to close my eyes.

You lay naked before me. You were beautiful and you listened.

If only things had stayed that way.

It started on the sixth day, a Monday.

I had been forced to leave you alone over the weekend for family reasons. I don't remember what I did that weekend. I think I baked a big batch of vanilla cakes. Emil and I watched Astrid Lindgren's Alla vi barn i bullerbyn, which was being repeated for the hundredth time. You just have to grin and bear it.

I was desperate by Monday morning, when they'd all gone. Just to test myself, to discipline myself, I chopped a couple of armfuls of wood and filled up the basket by the fire before I set off. I almost ran to your house, hardly bothering to look around. My heart was beating fast, I think I was blushing.

As always I was afraid something might have changed during my absence. But the snow that had fallen during the weekend lay undisturbed on the drive and there were no marks on the porch. I went inside.

When I walked into your room I stood motionless in the doorway for several minutes. You were lying there with the blanket pulled up to the knife handle. The contours of your body were clearly visible beneath the thin woollen fabric.

A new kind of beauty, but not created by my hand. I was one hundred per cent certain: I had left you naked. On the rare occasions when I had covered you with the blanket, I had placed it over your lower abdomen. I had never covered your whole body. But now the blanket was draped halfway up your chest.

I stood there motionless, listening. There had been no marks in the snow, so there must be someone else inside the house. Someone who had been there all the time.

No point in pretending otherwise: I was scared. Scared and embarra.s.sed. There was someone in the house, someone who had known about my comings and goings, perhaps listened to my confessions. Someone knew more about me than I would wish any living person to know.

I took a carving knife from the magnetic holder in the kitchen and spent over an hour searching the entire house. I opened every cupboard, every wardrobe, every drawer, even if it was actually too small for anyone to hide in. I found nothing, and the impression I had gained on the first day was reinforced: apart from the tipped-over saltcellar, there was nothing to indicate that the house had ever been lived in.

I went back to you and sat down.

'How did you get the blanket over you?'

That was the first question I asked you. My monologues had never taken the form of questions; I had no interest in speculating about your life among the living. You were simply here.

During the search I had grown hot and sweaty in all my layers. It was as if an extinguishing material, two words, six letters: dry ice had been injected directly into my muscles as you parted your blue lips and uttered three words: 'I was cold.'

Your voice was weak, hollow, as if it came from far away. My body was suddenly ice cold, I was frozen to the chair. Your lips closed. You had parted them just far enough to allow the words to escape. It was a long time before my vocal cords thawed out sufficiently for me to speak: 'You can't be cold. You're dead.'

Did I see the faintest twitch at the corner of your mouth? The hint of a smile? Your lips opened again, a little further this time. You said, 'You're dead too. You're wearing sweaters.'

'I'm not dead.'

'You're not alive.'

Only now did it strike me as odd that you knew I was wearing sweaters. But then my gaze slid up to your eyes. They were open. Only a fraction, a slightly denser shadow below the eyelid. Like someone having a pleasurable experience, or about to fall asleep. Or someone who has just woken up. I couldn't see your eyes.

A person's ability to deal with new situations is a strange thing. You were talking to me. I hadn't imagined that you would be able to talk to me. But when you did, I accepted it. What else could I do? You've made your bed, and now you must lie in it. That's what my mother used to say. I hated that expression. When I hear myself saying it to my own children I am seized by the urge to punch myself on the nose. But that's the way it is.

I think you were looking at me from beneath those almost-closed eyelids. I asked, 'Would you like another blanket?'