Let The Old Dreams Die Part 17

'Maybe it was because of her missing finger.'

'Yes, but that was on her left hand.'

'What a memory.'

'I've done nothing but remember her over the past few years. OK. When she didn't react the second time I prodded her, I did this...'

Matte made a jerky, prodding movement with his finger.

'Tap-tap-tap, and you know what...her skin. It was all hard. Didn't give at all, no matter how hard I prodded. Hard, yet not solid. Do you understand what I mean? You can feel it, if you tap on...a statue, for example, as opposed to a sheet of plywood. It's not exactly easy to explain what the difference is, but it's sort of like a...a vibration in a thinner material.'

'And this was...a thinner material?'

'Yes.'

'So what kind of material was it?'

'Plastic.'

'Plastic?'

Matte snorted. The corners of his mouth turned up in a grin.

'I'm joking. I've no idea what kind of b.l.o.o.d.y material it was. Just that it was hard, and thin.'

Silence fell. I could hear the subway rumbling past somewhere down below. The room had grown darker. Only Matte's white shirt was clearly visible. I tried to picture it: a human being made of a hard, thin material. I saw metal.

'You mean she was some kind of robot?'

Matte shook his head, got up and went into the kitchen. When he came back he was carrying a lit candle in a holder, and he looked like an ill.u.s.tration from some ghost story. He placed the candle on the table.

'Cla.s.sic paranoia, eh? Everyone is a robot except me. No, that's not what it's about. I understand, of course I do, you have to picture things in your mind. But delete robot. Can we come back to this? I'll finish telling you the story, and it might all become clearer. Or not. OK?'

'OK. Yes.'

'Eventually I got her to turn around. I waved my hand in front of her eyes like this, and she...she gave me a really funny look. I wrote the word on the board, and that was that. Oh. One more thing. Do you remember what she used to shout when she was calling us in? From the corridor?'

I shook my head.

'Come on. It would be good if you could remember this yourself. She'd come out of the cla.s.sroom, and we'd all be there mucking about, and she'd raise her arm and shout...can you remember what she used to shout?'

I closed my eyes and tried to picture the scene. Yes. There we were. And she came out. She was wearing some kind of brightly coloured blouse with big leaves on it, and she had...

For f.u.c.k's sake, we only had her for a week and she...

I opened my eyes.

'She never changed her clothes. It just struck me. She wore the same clothes for the whole week she was there. Didn't she?'

Matte smiled. Or whatever you might call that thing he was doing with his mouth.

'You're getting there. And do you remember what she used to shout?'

I closed my eyes again. The big leaves...hair like a helmet...she raised her hand, she shouted...

All you children...all you children...come in...

'I've got it. All you children! Come in! Welcome!'

'Exactly.'

'Yes. That was it. So?'

'I'm getting there. That day I followed her when school was over. Tailed her. From a distance. She didn't live far from the school. Up in those old apartment blocks on Holbergsgatan, behind the centre. You know the ones I mean? Anyway. I saw her go in through a door, so I sat down on a bench by the children's playground and waited.'

'What were you waiting for?'

'How should I know? Nothing better to do, I suppose. When I'd been sitting there for a while she came out onto the balcony. And where I was sitting...there was a tree between us, closer to me. So I could see her, but she couldn't see me. She stood there on the balcony for a few minutes. Then she went inside, and I stayed where I was. I don't know, I suppose I was in the middle of some fantasy about a stakeout. You know, that I was...'

'Cup of coffee and a doughnut.'

'Exactly.'

'Why didn't you talk to me?'

Matte raised his eyebrows. For some reason I sounded really upset. I waved it away, told him to carry on. He leaned forward.

'I asked you. I asked you if you wanted to come with me to tail the subst.i.tute teacher, I said there was something shady about her, but you had indoor hockey training or something.'

'Handball.'

'Handball. And it was probably just as well. When I'd been sitting there for a quarter of an hour she left the apartment and went off somewhere, and I climbed up to her balcony. Up the drainpipe.'

'You're kidding?'

'No. And fortunately...or however you want to put it, she'd left the balcony door open, so I could get inside. And at this point I have to ask permission to repeat myself, because do you know what was in there?'

'No.'

'Nothing.'

'Nothing?'

'Nothing.'

'What do you mean, nothing?'

'Nothing. Not a single ornament. Nothing.'

'You mean...but she had furniture and-'

'No. She had nothing. It was completely empty. No sofa, no rugs, no tables, no telephone, no TV. Not a thing. Just like when you see pictures of brand-new apartments. Nothing.'

'A bed, then...'

'No bed. Empty walls, empty floors, empty s.p.a.ce in between. I went into the bedroom, what would have been the bedroom, and opened the fitted wardrobes. Empty.'

Silence. I tried to imagine how a person could live in an apartment that was completely empty. It was impossible.

'But maybe she was just checking out an apartment she was thinking of buying, or something.'

'It's a possibility. But I wasn't thinking that at the time.'

'So what were you thinking?'

'Nothing.'

'There's a lot of nothing going on here.'

'Yes. But as I stood there in the bedroom I heard the key in the front door and I...just froze. I couldn't move. I just stood there. Heard the front door open, close. I somehow realised there were no explanations or excuses, but...my brain was completely empty. So I just stood there. The door to the living room was open...'

Matte stopped and looked around his own living room.

'It feels strange to be talking about living rooms and bedrooms when there was no furniture. Without furniture they're just s.p.a.ces, aren't they? Kitchen, bathroom, that's different, there are things that are part of the fittings, but other rooms become what they are because of the furniture we put in them.

'So when I say the door between the bedroom and the living room, I mean the door between the smaller and the larger s.p.a.ce. But you understand that.'

There was a short silence, until I asked, 'What happened then?'

'Guess.'

'Nothing?'

'Nothing. She came into the living room. She was wearing that blouse with the big leaves on it. She went and stood in the middle of the living room with her back to me and...just stood there. In the middle of the floor. And I stood in the bedroom, not moving a muscle, looking at her back. Felt the sweat from my armpits trickling down past my waist. I was scared s.h.i.tless. I don't know why, but I felt as if there was a scream stuck in my throat that just wanted to force its way out. There was something so horrible about her back, no, not her back. But the idea that she might slowly turn around and look me in the eye. I couldn't interpret her back, you see, the way she was just standing there, the only way I could make sense of it was to think that she knew I was there, and she was simply... playing with me.

'And that scream...I was sure it would come out if she turned around, because as I stood there, I don't know why, but I became more and more convinced that if...if she turned around...she wouldn't have a face.

'We stood there. This was late summer, so...I don't know how much time pa.s.sed, but it started to get dark outside. The lights outside came on, and still we stood there. I couldn't move. Every muscle in my body was numb, and the longer I stood there, the more certain I became that I would never be able to move, and my thoughts...my thoughts...got weaker and weaker too. If you imagine your thoughts like someone talking inside your head, it was as if the person who was talking...was sinking. Or disappearing. Sinking down into something. Being suffocated.

'And when you stop thinking. That's when it gets dangerous.'

For the last few minutes Matte's gaze had been fixed on something far away, or deep inside himself. Now he brought it back and looked at me.

'Do you know what happens if you stop thinking? If there's nothing to take in from the outside? Do you know what comes instead?'

I thought about it for a few seconds. Then I said, 'Life?'

Matte slapped his thigh, smacking it with such vigour that I jumped. He leapt up out of the armchair and grabbed hold of my face with both hands.

'Brilliant! b.l.o.o.d.y brilliant!'

I didn't understand what was so brilliant, but Matte was absolutely beside himself for a moment. He shook my head back and forth, staring into my eyes. Then he suddenly seemed to become aware of what he was doing; he let go of me, took a step backwards and ran a hand over his face.

'Sorry. I didn't mean to...I was just so...pleased. That you understand.'

'Well, I don't know about...'

'You don't see the same thing as me, you're not me, but just the fact that you said it, that that's what you said when I...Life, yes. When there's nothing to see, when there are no thoughts, life comes instead. Naked. And you know, as I stood there in that room...you know what my life was like at the time. My mother drove into a rock face with my brother, you know.'

'But that was an accident, right?'

'I don't think so. I won't go into details, but...I don't think so. In the middle of the day, no oncoming traffic, just straight into the rock face...no. I don't think so.'

'f.u.c.king h.e.l.l, Matte.'

'Yes. f.u.c.king h.e.l.l, Matte. Although you know how it is when you're young...you want to live. You keep yourself busy, you find stuff. Like I did with The Wall. But as I stood in that room staring at her back, when I'd been standing like that for a long time...it came. Like a horrible black darkness, slowly being poured into my body. It started in my stomach. The weight. And it just kept on pouring in until it filled my head as well. My life...there wasn't just a wall between me and other people, I lived inside that black wall, I...it's impossible to describe it. But it was black. Completely black. That was actually when I really lost the plot. The other stuff, that was just...a consequence.'

'What other stuff?'

'Well, eventually I managed to move. One step at a time. Went over to her. But slowly, I was moving inside that wall, you see, and my progress was...slow.'

Matte held a hand out in the air as if he were putting on the brakes, then he went over to the stereo and switched it on. Several red diodes began to glow.

'I set this up before you came. To fit in with my lecture. Do you know what track four on The Wall part two is called?'

'No.'

'It's called "Vera".'

'Just like-'

'Yes. Just like. Now listen carefully.'

Matte pressed Play on the tape deck and a lonely note emerged from the speakers. Then, in the distance, a voice that sounded like something on short wave radio...a few words were called out in the background...more radio voices...a machine gun or something like that... a voice calling something...an explosion, then the vocal started.

Matte stopped the tape. 'Did you hear it?'

I shook my head. 'What am I supposed to hear? Vera Lynn? Was her name Lynn too?'

Matte rewound the tape, turned up the volume and pressed Play again. I leaned closer to the speakers and closed my eyes.

The note...the radio voices...the words being called out and...

I sat bolt upright on the sofa and looked at Matte. He pressed Stop.

'Did you hear?'

'Play it again.'