More Bitter Than Death: A Novel Part 8

I try not to worry about why she didn't come, not to think about what might have happened. I try to ignore the image of the man with the shaved head whose name is Henrik.

Hillevi offered to tell her story. No, not offered, insisted. She was adamant.

Her hands are resting confidently on her knees, no nervousness, her green eyes calmly addressing Aina.

"Jakob and I met when we were teenagers, in the church youth group. I was . . ." She thinks for a second, looks up at the fluorescent light, which casts a cold, white gleam over the room. "So young. I was so young."

She smiles again, and there's nothing bitter in her smile. It's warm and beautiful and perfect, like everything else about her.

"So we've been together pretty much our whole lives. We grew up together, got married, had a family."

Then she falls silent for a while, as if she's searching for something in her memory but can't quite access it.

"How was your relationship in the beginning?" Aina asks.

Hillevi smiles faintly and looks down at her well-groomed hands, at her short, dark-red nails. The lone, thick silver ring.

"It was fantastic. Isn't it always in the beginning? We were so in love. We are so in love."

Something sad comes over her now, but it only lasts a moment. Then she's back to looking just as composed as before.

Aina nods and asks, "So when did things go south?"

"After Lukas was born, our oldest son. A child changes a relationship. It brings up a bunch of stuff from your own childhood. When you become a parent, it makes you reevaluate your own childhood, your own parents, you know? Jakob had been beaten when he was little. He comes from a well-to-do, unbelievably old-fashioned family. Children were supposed to be seen and not heard."

I see Malin smiling in the chair next to Hillevi. And Hillevi sees it too, turning quietly to her.

"You're laughing, and I know why. It just sounds so ridiculously old-fashioned, doesn't it?"

Malin seems embarra.s.sed, looks down at her worn jeans, crosses her muscular, sunburned arms over her chest. But Hillevi doesn't appear to be upset.

"It's okay, Malin. I know it sounds crazy. I think it's crazy, myself. But some of the people in the Free Church are like that, although of course most of them are totally normal. I actually grew up in a really friendly family. Anyway, Jakob lost his job around that same time. He had been working as an a.s.set manager at a company that went bankrupt. Then he just stayed unemployed. And I think it wasn't just his income he lost then, but his whole professional ident.i.ty. He started drinking a little in the evenings, not much. He's not an alcoholic, but the alcohol has a really negative effect on him. It brings out his destructive side.

"Do you have a career, Hillevi?"

I know the question might not be relevant right now, but in some mysterious way I've been curious about her from the beginning, fascinated, almost obsessed with this strong, beautiful creature.

"I'm a pediatric oncologist, that's a cancer doctor. I work at Astrid Lindgren Children's Hospital, which is part of Karolinska University Hospital."

I nod at her, even more intrigued now.

Hillevi continues. "The first time Jakob hit me he was sober, but we'd been going through a rough period. Lukas had recurrent ear infections and was often sick. I was working a lot of nights. Jakob was out of a job, watching soap operas all day, and he felt insecure. We were arguing, I don't actually remember what about, so it couldn't have been anything very important. It was just once, in the face, but it broke my nose. After that he was inconsolable, crying in my lap. I cried. We both cried."

Hillevi is silent now; the whole room is silent.

Sirkka coughs hoa.r.s.ely and runs her hand through her dry, red hair, now with half an inch of gray roots. She shakes her head and says, "You should have left right then."

Hillevi studies her in silence, smiles that calm, friendly smile, and shakes her head.

"You don't understand," Hillevi says.

"Honey, what's there to understand? The guy hit you," Sirkka says.

But Hillevi just smiles and shakes her head. "Jakob and I . . ." She is quiet for a moment and for the first time I see some uncertainty in her face, which at first I interpret as meaning that she agrees with Sirkka. But then Hillevi continues, "I don't really know how to explain this to you, Sirkka, so that you'll really understand. Or the rest of you. But to Jakob and me, marriage is sacred. You don't split up. It's a matter of faith."

Everyone gets quiet. Not even Aina can think of anything to say. She just nods slowly, which I know is what she does when there's something she doesn't really understand.

I look at the empty chair again, the one where Kattis should be sitting, and wonder if Henrik found her, if that's why she's not here. If she's also lying somewhere with a broken nose and blood smeared across her face.

"But if physical abuse isn't an okay reason to split up, then what is?" Malin asks, and there's something provocative in her voice.

"I believe, and I know Jakob feels the same way, that you can work your way through a crisis, that all people are capable of improvement. Besides, Jakob's not a bad person. He isn't. He just can't control this. And as long as he can't, we can't live together. I'm actually a little tired of the way they depict abusive men in the media. There's a tendency to demonize them, to avoid looking at what makes a man, or a woman for that matter, hit someone. It makes everything so much easier if you just decide that they're monsters, but that just doesn't hold up. Not for me anyway. It's not enough of an explanation, and it goes against my religion."

"So what did you do?" Sirkka asks, and I notice that she's trying to soften her raspy voice, to make her question less antagonistic.

"We talked to our pastor. He's close to both of us and we really trust him. We prayed together. And it actually improved for a while. But then it started again, so Jakob went to a psychologist who specializes in these kinds of issues. I thought he had it under control. He thought he had it under control. But when I came home one day, he had hit Lukas for dropping a juice box on the floor. Lukas was totally soaked . . . in juice and blood. I had to st.i.tch up his lip; it took two st.i.tches. A week later Lukas wet his pants in fear when I told him his father was going to pick him up at school. I can't forgive myself for letting that happen."

"You prayed together?" Malin sounds skeptical, but Hillevi nods without looking at her.

"I'm not asking you to understand, Malin. Prayer is not like writing a wish list to Santa Claus. It's about having a conversation with G.o.d."

The room is silent. There is only the hum of traffic from outside, and a solitary leaf twirls past the window in a gust of wind.

Hillevi sits motionless, her small hands resting on her knees and those green eyes fixed on me. It feels as though she's looking through me, into the wall, and past it. All the way into the black h.e.l.l of her marriage.

Then we hear a m.u.f.fled sound through the wall. Sven's voice somewhere out in the lobby.

Thudding.

A shrill voice, a woman's voice. And then Sven's more somber voice again, adamant.

They're having some sort of conversation. An argument? The woman sounds upset.

Hillevi turns to Aina, looking at her questioningly. Sirkka squirms.

Then the door flies open and someone rushes in, a woman dressed in black with her coat on and blue plastic shoe covers in her hand, which I realize Sven must have been trying to make her put on.

It's Kattis.

"He killed her!"

Before she even makes it into the circle, she screams the words with such force that Sofie almost falls off her chair, b.u.mping her leg into the table, causing the little blue glazed ceramic vase that my sister made in pottery cla.s.s to fall to the floor with a crash.

"Oh no." Kattis puts her hands over her mouth. "Oh no, what have I done?" She drops down onto her knees and carefully picks up the shards, holds them delicately in the palm of her hand, runs her finger over the glazed azure-blue surface. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Oh my G.o.d, I didn't mean for that to happen."

Aina and I look at each other, and I squat down next to Kattis on the floor.

"Hey, Kattis. It's just a little vase, and an ugly vase at that. It's totally fine."

But tears and snot are running down her cheeks.

"I shouldn't have come here," she mumbles. "I destroy everything. Everything I touch . . . turns to s.h.i.t. It would do the world a favor if he got rid of me."

"Listen, it was just a stupid little vase. It doesn't matter. What's important is that you're okay. Now sit down and tell us . . ."

"Who's dead?" asks Hillevi, who seems to be the only one able to formulate the question.

But Kattis doesn't respond, just collapses onto the waiting chair, hides her face in her hands, and sniffles loudly. "He killed her. He murdered her. In front of her own child!"

Aina gets up and walks over to Kattis. Puts her hand squarely on Kattis's upper arm. "Hey, Kattis. Tell us the whole story from the beginning."

"No!" Kattis roars, leaping out of the chair. She shakes off Aina's arm. "No, I'm not doing this anymore. Don't you get it? He killed her and now he's coming after me. I know it."

Aina firmly guides Kattis back onto the chair and gently removes her coat as if she were a little kid. Holds her firmly by the shoulders and forces Kattis to look into her face. "You have to tell us what happened."

"Henrik, it's Henrik. Don't you get it? He killed his new girlfriend and now he's going to kill me."

"Henrik, your ex?"

Kattis nods and looks up at the rest of us for the first time. She takes a deep breath and begins, "The police came this morning. A guy who was delivering flyers found Henrik's girlfriend murdered. Her daughter, she's five, was sitting in a pool of blood under the kitchen table next to her dead mother, drawing. And now he's going to kill me!"

Kattis wails the last part. Like a wounded animal.

"But do they have him in custody?" Sirkka asks.

Kattis just shakes her head. Looks down at the floor and whispers, "I can't take it anymore."

Sven has his good side.

Under that shabby corduroy blazer and those shapeless blue shirts, Sven is a truly empathetic man, and his worn Birkenstock sandals have shuffled many a mile, down all sorts of roads.

He carefully helps me onto one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs in the kitchen, makes coffee, which, even though it's too cold and too weak, tastes better than any coffee I've had in ages. He listens to my incoherent description of the meeting, lets me vent all my dejection and anger, doesn't interrupt me, just sits there and picks at his pipe without actually lighting it. He wouldn't dare. Aina could be back at any time with the food she walked down to Soderhallarna to pick up.

"In a way I know exactly how Kattis feels. You know? I totally know what it means to be hunted, to always wonder who's hiding in the shadows under the trees in the park, always needing to walk on the side of the street with the best lighting, sticking close to the people out walking their dogs or groups of kids, just to avoid that feeling of being exposed, alone, vulnerable."

"I understand," Sven says.

"But you still lose. You're always on your guard."

"I understand," Sven says.

I look at him for a moment, noticing that he's repeating himself, affirming my comments as if he really did understand.

It's dark outside the window. Sven and I are the only ones in the office. The women from the group have all gone home. Some of them were arguing. Others, like Sofie, were quiet and seemed troubled.

Reality bites. Isn't that what people say?

"I'm just so scared that he'll kill her too."

"I understand," Sven says.

I can't help laughing. "Sven, when you say that, I feel like I'm one of your patients. You know that, right?"

His hand is on mine now, big, warm, dry, the way my dad's hand felt when I was little, infinitely safe, a touch I could get lost in.

But Sven doesn't laugh.

I glance at him again. His gray hair is slicked back, revealing his high, tan forehead. The wrinkles around his eyes are deeper than usual. He looks tired, maybe indifferent.

And I see a tired man in his fifties whose wife just left him but who is nonetheless able to set that aside to listen to me go on and on. Suddenly I'm curious how he's doing, a little ashamed that I've been so fixated on my own problems. I've actually never asked him how he's doing since Birgitta left him after all those years, how he's managing on his own with the loneliness and Scandinavia's dark autumn evenings.

"How are you doing, anyway?" I ask, glancing up at him. And as if on cue, he reaches for the cigarettes sitting next to his pipe on the table. He takes one out and slowly places it in the corner of his mouth, leaning forward for a match.

"You shouldn't smoke in here," I say. "You know Aina will go ballistic."

But he just shakes his head as if he has other things to think about and doesn't pay attention to my warning.

"What do you want me to say?" Sven replies. "It's a living h.e.l.l."

I nod in silence, sensing that he's about to confide in me for real. "Are you lonely?"

He nods without answering and looks down at his nicotine-stained fingers, studying his nails.

"How long has it been now?" I ask.

"She moved out a month ago."

"What happened?"

"She said she'd had enough, that she couldn't handle my lies anymore."

"Lies? Did she catch you?"

Sven nods and takes a deep drag. The cigarette glows brightly in the dark room like a sparkler.

"Who with?" I ask.

"What do you mean, who with?" Sven looks at me, confused, as if he doesn't understand the question, and suddenly I'm filled with doubt.