‘The Faringers are coming this evening. That’s all right with you, isn’t it?’
‘What?’
‘So then you won’t need to go to his surgery on Monday.’
It was Saturday morning. Valdemar was lying in bed with his newspaper, coffee and a fair sprinkling of crumbs. Alice had just come out of the shower.
‘Well, we were going out to meet up with Mats and Rigmor,’ she went on, ‘but they had some problem with their dogs, so I rang the Faringers instead.’
‘You rang them while you were in the shower?’
‘No, I rang them last night.’
‘You didn’t mention it last night.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
Valdemar waited for an explanation, but none was forthcoming. Alice stepped onto the scales instead and checked the result with a worried expression. ‘Useless bloody scales,’ she muttered out of the corner of her mouth. Then she stepped off and repeated the procedure. As far as Valdemar could tell, the result was just as depressing second time around.
‘Aha,’ he said. ‘We’ll be spending six hours shopping and cooking then, I presume?’
‘No,’ said Alice. ‘What we thought was that we’d just have mussels and garlic bread. Ingegerd and I will get it ready while you talk to Gordon. I asked him if that would be all right.’
Valdemar drained his coffee and closed his eyes.
‘I see,’ he said. ‘So while you and Mrs Faringer deal with the mussels and sample the wine in the kitchen, Mr Faringer and I are going to sit in the study analysing my depression.’
‘Exactly,’ said Alice. ‘What’s wrong with that?’
Valdemar paused for thought.
‘Nothing, Alice dear. It sounds a brilliant idea. Where do you get them all from?’
‘Eh?’ said Alice.
‘I hope Wilma and Signe and Birger Butt will be joining us too,’ continued Valdemar, inspired. ‘Gordon could grab the chance of examining Birger Butt while he’s at it, I think he could do with it. But maybe he hasn’t got a psyche?’
Alice, arms akimbo, dug her clenched hands into what had once been her waist and glared at him.
‘Now you’re being unfair again, Valdemar! Of course he has. But none of them are going to be in tonight. Wilma and Signe are going to Stockholm to the dinner show at Wallmans salonger with their father, I’ve told you that ten times already.’
‘Oh, is it today?’ said Valdemar.
‘Yes,’ said Alice. ‘It’s today.’
‘I thought it was next weekend.’
‘It’s all part of your depression,’ said Alice. ‘Not concentrating, forgetting things.’
‘I have been feeling a bit forgetful lately, it’s true,’ admitted Valdemar, heading for the bathroom.
‘So how are you?’ Gordon Faringer asked him, ten hours later. ‘No need to see this as an official consultation, by the way. But we can have a little chat now we’re here, seeing as Alice is so keen.’
‘At least we get out of scrubbing the mussels,’ said Valdemar.
‘Jolly good,’ said Faringer. ‘And this will be as confidential as any formal session, of course. So if you want to unload, be my guest.’
‘There isn’t much to unload, I’m afraid,’ said Valdemar. ‘It’s Alice who claims I’m depressed, not me.’
‘Yes, I know that,’ said Faringer. ‘But mild depressions are actually easier for other people to pick up on than for the person affected. Even the mild kind aren’t much fun, you know, they can be a real drag.’
‘I agree depression isn’t a fun subject,’ said Valdemar.
‘Now now, no need for sarcasm,’ said Gordon Faringer, winking as he raised his glass. ‘Cheers, by the way.’
‘Cheers,’ said Valdemar.
They drank, and sat in silence for a while.
‘Would you like me to ask a few questions?’ Faringer said after a while.
‘Yes, go on,’ said Valdemar.
‘You know that psychiatry isn’t an exact science, not like you with your financial figures. But it is based in observable phenomena, nonetheless.’
‘Naturally,’ said Valdemar. ‘There’s no need to apologize.’
‘Thank you,’ said Faringer. ‘Well, let’s start with your mood. Would you say you were feeling in low spirits?’
Valdemar mulled this over. ‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘But it’s been like that for forty years.’
‘Nothing special to exacerbate it recently?’
‘Nothing I can think of.’
‘How are you sleeping?’
‘I feel pretty tired.’
‘But when you sleep, you sleep properly?’
‘Yes.’
‘Any recent change you’ve noticed?’
‘I don’t think so. Though one doesn’t feel any perkier as the years go by.’
‘Don’t I know it,’ said Gordon Faringer, plucking out one of his nose hairs. ‘Your concentration, then? How’s that? Any problems with that at work?’
Valdemar sipped his wine. ‘Um, it’s pretty much as usual there, too. But then concentration’s never exactly been my strong suit. Alice says I forget things and I expect she’s right.’
‘Mhmm?’ said Faringer. ‘But you can still look forward to things?’
‘Er,’ said Valdemar, ‘Christ knows. Can you?’
‘Thanks for asking,’ said Faringer. ‘Well I’ve got my boat and the sea, you know. And the grandchildren, I get a lot out of all that, actually. But if I can press you a little on this one, how about your spark, your zest for life?’
‘Spark? Zest for life?’
‘Yes. It’s only natural for things to get us down sometimes, but are there still things you can find fun in?’
Valdemar took off his glasses and started polishing them on his shirt. ‘Listen, Gordon,’ he said, ‘if I really am depressed, what could be done about it anyway? I don’t want to start taking a load of stuff. Happy pills and that kind of crap.’
Gordon Faringer nodded and put on a professionally grave expression. ‘I can well understand that you don’t, Valdemar. But they can give you a little lift, and that means quite a lot. Give you back some pleasure in life and sense of purpose; you’d be surprised how many people are on a mild dose. Zest for life is damned important, anybody can see that. Going round feeling everything’s at rock bottom really wears us down, to put it simply. Do you often think about death?’
‘Off and on,’ said Valdemar. ‘But it’s the same as the rest, I always have done.’
‘Your father committed suicide, didn’t he?’
‘Yes he did,’ said Valdemar. ‘Thanks for reminding me.’
Faringer quietly studied his nails for a few seconds.
‘Why do you say that?’ he asked.
‘Eh?’ said Valdemar. ‘What did I say?’
‘You said: “Thanks for reminding me.” About your father’s death, that is.’
‘Sorry,’ said Valdemar. ‘I don’t know why I said that.’
‘But you’re not thinking of doing the same thing?’
‘Not at all,’ said Valdemar. ‘Once you’ve managed to keep it at arm’s length for so long, you can do it for the years you’ve got left as well.’
‘Is that how you see it?’
‘I don’t really know how I see it. Life’s bloody complicated . . . yes, that’s more the problem as I see it. And it seems easier to lie to yourself, the older you get.’
‘I don’t quite follow,’ said Faringer. ‘You’re sure nothing’s happened recently to drag you down?’
‘No,’ said Valdemar.
‘Absolutely certain?’ said Faringer.
‘I’ve no idea what it could possibly be, if so. Shall we go and see how they’re getting on in the kitchen?’
‘By all means. I’m glad to see you’ve got an appetite, anyway; that’s a good sign. But, you know, I wouldn’t mind seeing you again to do this a bit more formally, a proper appointment. How does next week look for you?’
‘I’ve got a lot on next week,’ said Valdemar.
‘The week after?’
‘All right,’ said Valdemar. ‘If you really think there’s any point.’
‘I most certainly do,’ said Gordon Faringer, raising his glass. ‘Here’s to you, and now let’s rejoin the womenfolk and get to work on those mussels.’
She finished the painting job late on Saturday night.
She judged it to be finished, at any rate, but it was tricky to be sure without seeing it in daylight. She would check in the morning, and there was plenty of paint left if she needed to do any touching up.
She knew he wouldn’t be fussy, though, because he had said so and it was only the cheapest kind of topcoat. No need for it to be tip-top, Valdemar had stressed; she liked the word tip-top. It sounded so old-fashioned and safe, somehow. Especially the fact that there was no need to strive to be it.
Like with life, she thought, that didn’t need to be tip-top either, but it could still have a touch of style. More or less like these walls, clean and neat, but not excessively smooth or special.
She’d enjoyed the work, too. The taping, the brushwork for corners and fiddly bits, then the tray and the roller, from the top down in long, even strokes; you could see the result straight away, and the whole thing looking smarter and smarter, stripe by stripe, metre by metre. There certainly weren’t many jobs where you could see such instantly rewarding results as you could when you were painting, she thought. And it was easy to have a few general thoughts about life while you were doing it; nothing too deep, half your concentration on what you were doing, half on whatever happened to come into your head. It was a good combination. And then of course there was the symbolism of it: painting over all the old dirt and starting something new. Looking forward.
But now it was Saturday evening and the job was finished, both the kitchen and the living room. She couldn’t do any more to it for now, at any rate. She put on her thick jumper and her jacket, went outside and sat in one of the new garden chairs. She lit the pipe and thought that the house really ought to have a lamp at the corner, or some other sort of outdoor lighting; maybe she could take it up with him on Monday. Suggest straight out that they fix up a lamp, why not?
Or even tomorrow. She hoped he might get time to come for a while on Sunday, as he had hinted. She shivered, in spite of her layers of clothes; there was a distinct feel of encroaching autumn, it couldn’t be many degrees above zero this late in the evening and the darkness felt denser somehow. As if the cold was packing it more closely together and making it harder to forge your way through.
When there’s no light, it’s more important to be able to listen than to see, she thought. At night it’s the sounds that matter, not the pictures; she tried to focus on her hearing but could only hear the usual muffled murmur of the forest. She wondered what kind of wildlife there was out there. Elk and foxes, that was for sure. Badgers too, and lots of smaller species: mice and voles and all those other names she couldn’t bring to mind. And birds, of course; she wasn’t very good at species of anything except snakes, because she had gone to a Montessori school for a term and a half, and they had spent almost all their time on snake-related projects, for some reason. But there weren’t many kinds in Sweden. Adders, grass snakes and slow-worms, if she remembered rightly. And wasn’t the slow-worm actually a lizard, if you wanted to split hairs?
Wolves? The thought suddenly occurred to her: what if there are wolves in the forest? Maybe there’s a big male with yellow eyes and slavering jaws out there staring at me, over by the earth cellar.
But the idea didn’t scare her, even if it was the case. Wolves didn’t attack people, she knew that. Hardly any other animals did either, come to that, according to her biology teacher at upper secondary. No, it was humans who were humans’ worst enemy, he told them in his distinctively mournful tone – he had just got divorced and moved to the area from some other town. She could sense that his wife was one of the enemies he had in mind.
And they were the only species on earth to behave like that, he added, more mournfully still. Svante Mossberg – his name suddenly came into her mind. The boys had called him Mossy, of course.
She moved a few metres, across to the currant bushes, pulled down her trousers and squatted to pee.
Humans are humans’ worst enemy? That was undoubtedly correct. Why are we so bloody brilliant at being horrible to each other and hurting each other? As she pondered this conundrum, a penguin film she had seen a few years ago came into her head. It was about emperor penguins, those comical creatures that lived down in Antarctica in the harshest of conditions. Keeping their eggs safe, the male and female taking the responsibility in turns, walking long distances across the ice to get food and being entirely dependent on one another for their survival. Even though they barely met.
She pulled up her trousers and went indoors. She locked the door and thought that was exactly what he was. Valdemar, her penguin.
Emperor penguin, no less.
She had a wash, cleaned her teeth and got into bed. I must remember to tell him, she thought.
Valdemar the Penguin. Perhaps she would have a go at writing a song about him. Why not?
She fell asleep with butterflies of expectation in her stomach.
Waking several hours later, she had an entirely different feeling. She stayed still, lying on one side with her hands between her knees, and tried to work out what it was. What had woken her. Whether it was something external or something internal; a sound from the house or the forest, or something she had dreamt. It was pitch black all around her, without a single streak of dawn light; she realized it couldn’t be more than three or four o’clock, but stupidly enough she had left her watch over on the table, which she could not even see in the dense, inky blackness, however hard she strained her eyes. It made no difference whether her eyes were open or closed. Darkness, nothing but darkness.
But the sense of unease quivered within her. Maybe it didn’t even need an excuse, she thought. Maybe you could be scared and distressed without particular cause? As if it was a sort of underlying state, at least at this time of night.
Could it be as simple as that? When you let your guard down and weren’t ready for action, all the horrible, frightening things could worm their way inside your shell. Even though they had no name. Perhaps this was how small creatures felt, lying low in the primitive shelter of their holes while birds of prey circled beneath the sky with their sharp beaks and talons, trying to spot them.
The permanently ticking clock of fear. The undefined anxiety. The fragility of life. It could break at any moment; when you were least expecting it, death came knocking at the door.
Fuck, she thought. Why am I lying here worrying like this? It doesn’t help to imagine myself as some cowering little creature, waiting for the hawk. What’s the matter with me? What was it that woke me up?
She hadn’t felt like this at Lograna before. Not even when that man was outside, staring at the house; that time she had known what it was that had scared her, but now it was kind of shapeless and inexplicable. And she’d always been afraid of the dark.
So I suppose it’s the solitude, she thought. Sooner or later it’ll drive you mad; her mother had said that once, and she couldn’t remember if it was directed specifically at her or if it was a more general statement. You need other people in your life, she’d said anyway, no one can manage on their own in the long run.
Just like the penguins then, thought Anna. A solitary penguin is a dead penguin. And wasn’t that precisely the warning Sonja at Elvafors had been trying to give her? Not to withdraw, because it was the contact with the others that offered the route to healing.
The others who were in the same boat. Yet you were supposed to cut all ties with the fellow addicts you’d hung around with. That was necessary in a way, she knew that, but it certainly encouraged you to seek solitude. Especially if you were already the kind of person who thrived on it.
But of course there were different kinds of people. The only thing you really had to fear was certain other people, she thought. And the only thing you absolutely couldn’t do without was . . . certain other people.
Sensational conclusions I’m coming to here, she observed. There are people called Valdemar and there are people called Steffo. What a scoop.
She sighed and got up. Fumbled her way to her jumper and jacket without putting on the light. Pipe, tobacco and matches; then she put on Valdemar’s boots and went out into the pitch black autumn night.