little fingers and occasionally looked up at Patrik as if to thank him for lending him this fantastic toy.
Jenny went on, ‘Sure, Anders is a fucking wreck, but he could never kill anyone. He’s a decent guy. He rings my bell and asks to bum a cigarette now and then, and whether he’s sober or pissed he’s always decent. I’ve even let him baby-sit Max a few times when I had to run out to the market. But only when he was completely sober. Never otherwise.’
She stubbed out the cigarette in an overflowing ashtray.
‘Actually there’s nothing bad about any of the winos here. They’re just unfortunate devils, drinking away their lives together. The only people they’re hurting is themselves.’
She tossed her head to get the hair out of her face and reached for the cigarette packet again. Her fingers were yellow from nicotine, and this cigarette obviously tasted as good to her as the first one. Patrik was starting to feel smoked out and didn’t think he’d get any more useful information from Jenny. Max protested at being lifted down and handed back to his mother.
‘Thanks for the help. We’ll probably have occasion to come back again.’
‘Well, I’m always here. I’m not going anywhere.’
The cigarette now lay smouldering in the ashtray and the smoke curled towards Max, who squinted his eyes in annoyance. He was still chewing on the keys and gave Patrik a look as if challenging him to try to take them. Patrik gave a cautious pull, but the rice-grain teeth were amazingly strong. By this time the keys were covered in drool, and it was hard to get a real grip on them. He tentatively pulled a little harder and got an angry grunt in reply. Jenny, used to handling such situations, took a firm grip and managed to extract the keys and hand them to Patrik. Max shrieked at the top of his lungs to show his displeasure at how the situation had turned out. Holding the key ring between his thumb and index finger, Patrik discreetly tried to wipe it off on his trouser leg before he stuffed it back in his pocket.
Jenny and a screaming Max followed him to the door. The last thing Patrik saw before the door closed were big tears running down the boy’s round cheeks. Again he felt an ache somewhere deep in his heart.
The house was too big for him now. Henrik wandered from room to room. Everything in the house reminded him of Alexandra. She had loved and cared for every inch of this house. Sometimes he had wondered if it was for the sake of the house that she had married him. It wasn’t until he had brought her home that their relationship had turned serious, for her. As for him, he’d been serious since the first time he saw her at a university meeting for foreign students. Tall and blonde, she had an aura of aloofness that attracted him more than anything else in his whole life. He’d never wanted anything as much as he wanted Alex. And he was used to getting whatever he wanted.
His parents had been far too preoccupied with their own lives to have time to put any energy into his. The hours that weren’t taken up by the business had been devoured by endless social events. Charity balls, cocktail parties, dinners with business associates. Henrik had to sit nicely at home with the nanny. What he remembered most about his mother was the smell of her perfume when she kissed him good-bye, in her thoughts already on her way to some elaborate party. As compensation he had only to point at something and he would have it. Nothing material had ever been denied him, but it was given with indifference, the same way one absentmindedly scratches a dog that begs for attention.
Alex had been the first thing in Henrik’s life that he couldn’t have just for the asking. She was inaccessible and contrary and therefore irresistible. He had courted her stubbornly and intensely. Roses, dinners, presents and compliments. No effort had been spared. And she had reluctantly let herself be courted and led into a relationship. Not under protest – he never could have coerced her – but with indifference. It wasn’t until he took her home to Göteborg that first summer and they walked into the house here on the island of Särö that she began to take an active interest in the relationship. She responded to his embraces with a new-found intensity, and he was happier than ever before. They were married that same summer in Sweden after knowing each other for only a few months. After they returned to France for one last year at university and graduation, they returned to the house on Särö for good.
Now that he thought back, he realized that the only time he’d seen her really happy was when she was refurbishing the house. He sat down in one of the big Chesterfield easy chairs in the library, leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Images of Alex flickered past like in an old Super 8 film. He felt the leather cool and taut under his hands and followed the winding path of an age crack with his index finger.
What he remembered best were her different smiles. When she found a piece of furniture for the house that was exactly what she’d been looking for, or when she cut away old wallpaper with a knife and found the old original wallpaper in good condition underneath, then her smile was big and genuine. When he kissed her on the nape of her neck, or caressed her cheek, or told her how much he loved her, she would also smile – sometimes. But not always. Her smile then was a smile he came to hate, a distant, preoccupied smile. Afterwards, she would always turn away, and he could see her secrets wriggling like little snakes just beneath the surface.
He had never asked any questions. Out of sheer cowardice. He’d been afraid to start a chain reaction whose consequences he was not prepared to handle. It was better at least to have her physically by his side, with the hope that she would one day be his completely. He was prepared to risk that he might never have everything, but at least he’d be sure of keeping a part of her. A fragment of Alex was enough. That’s how much he loved her.
He looked round the library. The books that covered all the walls and which she had laboriously tracked down in the antiquarian bookshops of Göteborg were only for show. Except for textbooks at university he couldn’t recall ever seeing her read a book. Perhaps she had enough of her own pain and didn’t need to read about other people’s.
What was hardest for him to accept was the pregnancy. Whenever he brought up the question of children she would shake her head vehemently. She didn’t want to bring children into a world that looked like this one, she had told him.
He’d accepted the fact that there was another man. Henrik knew that Alex wasn’t driving so eagerly to Fjällbacka every weekend to be alone, but he could live with that. Their own sex life had been dead for more than a year. He could live with that too. Even her death he could learn to live with, over time. What he couldn’t accept was that she was ready to bear another man’s child but had refused to bear his. That was what haunted him at night. In a sweat he would toss and turn between the sheets with no hope of sleep. He had developed dark circles under his eyes and lost several kilos. He felt like an elastic band that was stretched and stretched and sooner or later would reach a point where it broke with a snap. So far, he had grieved without tears, but now Henrik Wijkner leaned forward, put his face in his hands and wept.
5
The accusations, the harsh words, the insults all ran off him like water. What were several hours of insults compared with years of guilt? What were several hours of insults compared with life without his ice princess?
He laughed at the pathetic attempts to make him accept the blame. He saw no reason to do that. As long as he saw no reason to do so, they would not be successful.
But perhaps she had been right. Perhaps the day of reckoning was finally here. Unlike her, he knew that the judgement would not be clothed in human flesh. The only thing that could pass judgement on him was something that was greater than humanity, greater than the flesh, but equal to the soul. The only thing that can judge me is the one who can see my soul, he thought.
