More Bitter Than Death: A Novel Part 33

"Like I said, it's barbaric. Plus, it's just nonsensical. Henrik, who is developmentally normal, was sentenced to forensic psychiatric care because he was depressed when he committed his crime. Still, they say that he's basically healthy now, so he'll probably be out again very soon. And Tobias, who has a chronic mental disorder, will rot in jail. For ten years. What kind of country is this?"

Vijay shrugs. "Welcome to reality, my dear."

I shake my head. "No, the problem isn't that I'm starry-eyed. This is wrong. It's unworthy of a civilized society. Tobias, who is so naive, who has obviously been bullied and picked on by older kids his whole life-how's he going to fare in jail?"

"They do come up with individually tailored plans at those prisons. So they can meet each prisoner's particular needs." There's a sarcastic bite to Vijay's tone.

"Yeah, right," I reply.

"Another observation is that no one had actually ever diagnosed his handicap. If I understand his case right, he had problems starting at the age of eighteen months, and his parents and teachers had countless conversations with the medical establishment and mental health officials. Why didn't anyone figure out what was wrong with him sooner? They might have been able to help him then. They might have been able to prevent what happened."

I don't know what to respond; I just feel anxious and hopeless after hearing all this. "Did Tobias ever say why he did it?" I ask.

"No, he refused to talk about the crime at all, kept silent as a wall. He never confessed. They arrested him just as he was trying to help Kattis out of her totaled car. He was screaming something incoherent about how they had to help her, that that was all that mattered. That was basically all he said, and then he clammed up. During all the questioning sessions, not a word. If they hadn't had forensic evidence, they wouldn't have been able to convict him for Susanne's murder. But they found those b.l.o.o.d.y latex gloves with his fingerprints inside them in the backseat of his car. And his shoes had traces of Susanne's blood on them. They also found some of his hair in Susanne's apartment. My guess is that he somehow thought he was helping Kattis by committing the crime. She had really bad-mouthed Henrik and his new girlfriend. Anyway, thank G.o.d he didn't kill the little girl too."

I nod, recalling those small, dirty arms wrapped around my neck, the smell of urine and mildew in that suffocating closet, the smoke billowing up between the floorboards and then vanishing up near the ceiling, the heat rising toward us from downstairs.

Vijay studies me in silence and I wonder what he's thinking, how he feels about all the injustices, the lopsidedness of our Scandinavian "model" society.

"All of this . . . ," I say. "It really gets me down. I've been thinking about Hillevi's kids too. Did you know they're back with their dad now?"

Vijay shakes his head sadly. "I didn't know. But that was expected, wasn't it?"

"I don't know. Maybe, but it's still wrong, so unbelievably wrong. They need a safe home somewhere. They shouldn't have to live with their abuser."

Suddenly I remember the dream I had one night last fall: how Hillevi came to me in her b.l.o.o.d.y slip and asked me to take care of her kids, how I promised to do precisely that. And yet they're back with their abusive father now. I wish I could have done more, that I could have actually helped those kids.

Then there's another kick, and I am brought back to Vijay's office. I look out the window. Light-green leaves sway in the breeze outside. I get up from the chair with great difficulty. "Hey, I have to get going now. I'm going to have coffee with a . . . friend."

He nods and absentmindedly says, "Yeah, that's fine."

"Ha. Thanks a lot for giving me permission," I retort.

Vijay smiles. "You have my permission, dear. And, oh, yes! The book. I'll get it for you."

As we part, he gives me a warm if slightly strained hug. My belly is in the way and he has to really contort himself to actually accomplish the hug. "Call me when . . . well, you know." He gestures toward my stomach and I nod, wave, and leave him there in his cramped little professor's office.

Outside the brick building, the air is warm and the sun feels nice on my face. I hear birds singing from the big old trees that line the walkway to the psychology department. People are lying on their backs in the gra.s.s smoking, laughing, studying for exams.

As the weather warms, Stockholm is coming back to life again.

As I walk through the door of the cafe, Kattis flashes me a big smile. Her long brown hair is down for once and it suits her, makes her look more grown-up and more feminine in some way.

It's even warmer inside than outside, if that's possible. The little cafe is filled with the scents of pastries and coffee.

"G.o.d, what a beautiful belly you have," Kattis says dreamily.

I laugh. "Oh, if you only had any idea how ridiculously tired I am of this by now."

"Well, it's not long now. Chin up."

I nod. I know all about keeping my chin up by now. There is nothing blessed about being pregnant. It's really an ailment, despite the claims of those Earth Mother midwives in their sensible shoes and pinecone necklaces. I've never felt so crummy in my life. All I can think about is that it'll be over soon, and I can finally have my body back. Sometimes that feels more important than the baby. So far babies are purely abstract. Although I can feel this one living inside me-kicking, doing somersaults, hiccuping-it still doesn't feel real. It's like a dream.

"How about you? How are you doing?"

She twists her hair around her fingers and smiles cautiously. "I'm good. I'm unbelievably glad Tobias's trial is over. I slept the entire day yesterday, I was so wiped out. As if I'd run a marathon. Is that normal?"

"Totally. It's the tension letting up."

She's quiet for a while. She sips her coffee and watches me over her cup. "Did you bring . . . ?"

"Yup." I bend down, dig around in my old, worn purse, and pull out the book. A General Theory of Love. I have no idea why Kattis wants to borrow this, even though I recall our having discussed it at some point. I didn't know she was much of a reader in the first place, let alone of academic treatises in English. She takes it with a Mona Lisa smile on her face and runs her hand over the cover as if it were a little puppy that had been lost and has finally been found again.

She says, "You know, sometimes I just feel like I want to understand everything that has happened this year."

I nod and look out across the cafe, filled with Stockholm residents who are taking spring seriously, wearing shorts and T-shirts, interspersed with old women in fur coats and hats.

"And . . . well, you know all that stuff with Henrik has also been really hard. I mean, he was sentenced to forensic psychiatric care, but . . ."

"What?"

She suddenly looks embarra.s.sed, presses the palms of her hands against her blushing cheeks, and seems to study the ceiling above us.

"The people I've talked to say they'll be releasing him soon," she says.

"And?" I ask.

She twirls her hair again, smiles hesitantly, and looks me in the eye. There's something girlish about the look on her face. Her delicate, chiseled face is completely smooth and without makeup. She smiles cautiously.

"Oh, I can wait."

"Wait? For what?" I ask, feeling a tingle travel down my spine, all the way from my neck to my groin. As if someone had poured cold water down my back. And suddenly I know what she's going to say, and it's as if the background noise in the cafe dies away, as if all the conversations at the little tables around us have paused, as if the clatter from the kitchen has ceased.

"For Henrik. Maybe he and I could be a thing again?"

GNESTA.

EIGHT MONTHS EARLIER.

So, this is love.

He realizes that it is only right that he too should get to experience it, although he hadn't been expecting that.

Not him.

Not with her, anyway.

Girls like her don't fall in love with guys like him. That's just how it is. And once again he is astounded that he's actually lying here in bed next to her. That he, of all people, is the one getting to touch her soft, pale skin, cup his hands over her small, pink nipples, kiss her inner thighs and the forest of light-brown hair that grows there, hear those little smothered sounds she makes as he moves more heatedly inside her. The noises confusingly evoke both p.o.r.n movies and the sound an injured animal makes, so that he feels both h.o.r.n.y and worried: Is he doing this wrong? Is this hurting her?

But she just smiles, says it's perfect, nice, so nice that it feels like she's coming apart. She explains to him that it's like a kind of pain even though it's not. And he understands what she means, because when he explodes in her, when he dies in her arms, he feels something similar. All the pain and all the pleasure and all the feelings wash over him like a gigantic, frightening, but also liberating wave.

No one is more beautiful than she is.

He had that thought the very first time he met her, and it was simultaneously arousing, forbidden, and yawningly mundane. It had been part of the reality he had just gotten used to: there were certain things in life that just weren't meant for him, for people like him, doors he would never be able to open, places he would never get to see, emotions he could never expect to experience.

Love, for one.

He noticed her right away when he started going to the Employment Center. He noticed how her long brown hair was streaked with fire when the sunlight hit it, how her eyes could change from the palest gray to the darkest thundercloud violet.

And when she laughed, he wanted to laugh with her, to share in her happiness. Although obviously she never laughed at him. Why would she do that? Why would anyone laugh at him?

And then . . . They had been chatting about his future. She was sitting there in front of him on her swivel chair as if it were the most natural thing in the world, sucking on her yellow pencil, saying, "But isn't it about time you pull yourself together? I mean, you've actually had two trial employment periods. You should have managed to get hired at one of those companies; you're a bright guy."

And he'd been ashamed. His cheeks got hot. His scalp turned red under his long, dark hair. He hated her for sitting there in her swivel chair with that pencil in her mouth like a lollipop, calling him a bright guy, hated that f.u.c.king grocery store where he'd spent day in and day out plucking old fruits and vegetables off the shelves-moldy oranges and rotten plums, with fruit flies swarming around him-detested the pointless welding training program that didn't lead to any kind of job, hated sorting mail in Solna, and all the nut jobs who worked there. Everyone stuttering, limping, crippled-freaks.

Everyone was like him.

And most of all he'd hated himself for not being able to be like other people, "acting like folk," as his mom used to call it before she and his dad up and died.

She puts her hand on his stomach and he can see it going up and down as he breathes.

"Hey you," she says. "Do you love me?"

"Of course I do," he mumbles.

Self-conscious but still happy, bursting with that grown-up love that tastes so different from anything he's ever encountered.

"Would you do anything for me?"

He turns to her and her hand rolls down onto the soiled blanket. The last rays of sunlight are shining in through the window, lighting the fire in her hair. Warily he sets the coin down on the stack of newspapers next to the bed and places his hand on her breast.

"Of course I would," he says.

"Even if it were horrible, really horrible?"

There is something dark in her eyes now, as if she were in pain. And he knows instantly that he would do anything to see her happy, to erase that look of pain from her face, to smooth out the furrows in her brow, to bring the smile back again.

"I'd do anything for you," he says. "Anything at all."

ABOUT THE AUTHORS.

Camilla Grebe (b. 1968) is a graduate of the Stockholm School of Economics and has had several entrepreneurial successes. She was a cofounder of Storyside, a Swedish audiobook publisher, where she was both CEO and publisher during the early 2000s. She lives in Stockholm, Sweden.

Asa Traff (b. 1970) is a psychologist specializing in cognitive behavioral therapy. She runs a private practice with her husband, also a psychologist. She primarily diagnoses and treats neuropsychiatric disorders and anxiety disorders. She lives in alvsjo, Sweden.

Also by Camilla Grebe and Asa Traff.

Some Kind of Peace.

Before You Die.

We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster eBook.

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