Manfred
We were an ordinary family. It was a morning like any other.
The kind you don’t expect to remember. One of the many insignificant days you assign no particular weight to, because you think you know that it won’t make much difference to your life. Just another day to deal with, to live through. To cope with and handle, like a form to be filled out and mailed before five o’clock.
Afsaneh got up first to give Nadja a bottle.
I heard her steps: light, tentative almost, as she snuck down the hall into the kitchen. As if she was tiptoeing across thin ice. Then the clatter, the rush of water from the tap and the slight bang as she placed the saucepan on the stove. Finally the rhythmic scratch of metal against metal as she whipped the formula into the water.
From my place in the bed – still warm from Afsaneh’s body – I could hear Nadja whining and coughing from the nursery next door.
The sounds of a very ordinary family: of a woman, my young wife, perhaps too young – there were those who thought so anyway – and of my daughter. And the silence left by my three older children who’d moved out and my ex-wife who left here one spring morning not too different from this one, with a suitcase so heavy she never would have been able to carry it if she hadn’t been so pissed off.
But I didn’t think of any of that at the time, not as I lay there, drowsy from last night’s dreams, in the warmth of the bed. It is only in hindsight that these small events take on weight and become significant.
It’s only afterwards that all the trivialities of a life grow, develop teeth and chase you through the night.
It was just another morning like so many others. In addition, it was Nadja’s third cold in as many weeks and both Afsaneh and I were tired of waking up in the night and soothing our beloved, but defiant, two-year-old.
We joked that Nadja became a baby again when she had a cold. And Afsaneh used to say that I had no one but myself to blame for deciding to start over again with another child and all the rest of it at over fifty.
Afsaneh cracked the door to the bedroom.
She carried Nadja on her hip and as she gently bent her knees and lifted Nadja to get a better grip, her robe slipped open baring one of her breasts, those beautiful breasts that had become mine against all odds.
She asked if I could stay home with the baby today, and I explained I had to go in to the station for a bit.
The station was police headquarters on Kungsholmen in Stockholm. The place I’ve worked for more than twenty years, the equivalent of my job, the salt mines. The place where I investigate murders and other serious crimes. Where I dealt with the very worst sides of humanity, the repulsive variants of human behaviour that the rest of the population needn’t concern themselves with.
How could I think it was so important?
Let them kill each other, I think. Let them rape and beat each other. Let the drugs flood in and the suburbs burn like fireworks in the night. Just leave me out of all that bullshit.
I remember Afsaneh frowning when I said I had to work. She reminded me that it was Ascension Day, a bank holiday, and asked what I had to do that was so important. Then she patiently explained she’d promised to meet with one of her doctoral students, which she’d already mentioned to me twice during dinner last night.
We went on like that for a while.
We squabbled about who would stay home, as if that were important at all. We squabbled in that unreflecting, tiresome way I imagine most families do on perfectly ordinary mornings in a safe and prosperous country like Sweden.
After Afsaneh had gone off to meet her doctoral student, and Nadja was lying next to me in our wide bed, pressing her little runny nose against my cheek, it felt pretty good after all. Why did I need to go to the station today? The dead could wait until tomorrow, and most of my colleagues were off anyway.
I don’t remember precisely, but I think I probably spent the morning tidying up the apartment. My knee was aching so badly, so I took a couple of Naproxen. Maybe I snuck in a couple of cigarettes under the extractor fan too. Nadja watched TV, and I had to turn up the volume to offset the noise from the roadworks outside on Karlavägen.
My elder daughter, Alba, called from Paris and asked to borrow money. I explained calmly but firmly that she would have to talk to her mother, because she’d already got an extra 3,000 from me this month. Besides, her siblings, Alexander and Stella, hadn’t received anything at all. And it’s important to be fair, right?
Fair, what a strange concept, in retrospect.
Eventually Nadja tired of the TV. She screamed and screamed, and I carried her around the apartment in a futile attempt to calm her down. Her little body was scalding hot, and I gave her Tylenol, even though Afsaneh didn’t like it when I did that – another thing we often squabbled about. Afsaneh didn’t think young children should take any medication unless they were dying.
Maybe Nadja was soothed by the Tylenol, maybe it was the sandwich I made for her that did the trick. Or maybe it was the roadworks outside the window that finally managed to distract her.
I lifted her up onto the windowsill in the living room, and she stood there for a long time seemingly fascinated by the digger that slowly ate its way into the road three floors below, while she licked butter off her sandwich and snot from her upper lip with her pointed little tongue. We talked about diggers and cars and trucks and motorcycles for a while. About all kinds of vehicles.
Nadja liked anything that had an engine and made a noise – Afsaneh and I had noticed that early on.
It must have been at that point Afsaneh called from the café.
I put a loudly protesting Nadja onto the floor and went out into the hall to talk undisturbed – the noise from the roadworks made the whole apartment vibrate.
Afsaneh asked how Nadja was feeling, and I said that she seemed fine, that she’d eaten a sandwich and it must not be that serious if she was eating and drinking.
Of course, I didn’t mention the Tylenol.
As soon as we hung up, I immediately sensed that something was wrong. It was as if the air had thickened, as if it was pressing against me, a tactile warning of approaching danger. A moment later I realised that I was actually reacting to the absence of something.
It was quiet.
The construction workers had apparently taken a break, and the only thing I heard was my own breath.
I went out into the living room to look for Nadja, but the room was as empty as her bottle, which lay on the floor in the middle of a pool of juice, and the pile of toys she’d dragged out in the morning.
Maybe it was then that my concern awoke, that primitive instinct we all possess, the drive to protect our children from any harm.
Then I was blinded by a ray of sunshine, a sharp streak of light that shouldn’t be there for the simple reason that the living-room windows were in the shade.
I turned towards the light, squinted and looked into the kitchen.
The window stood open, and the sun reflected off the glass.
Suddenly everything became clear to me: Afsaneh had cleaned the kitchen windows yesterday. She must have forgotten to put on the child lock. But Nadja couldn’t have climbed up and opened the window. And why would she do such a thing?
The moment I formulated the question to myself, I knew why: the digger, the goddamn digger.
I ran towards the open window.
I ran because it was the only thing I could do. I ran because you have to, because you have no choice. You cannot let your child fall, die. If there is one thing in life you cannot do it is that.
Everything else you can get away with.
Outside, the sun’s rays played in the sheer green of the trees and below the construction workers stood still, looking up at me with blank eyes. A couple of them ran towards our building with outstretched arms.
Nadja was hanging off the windowsill and the strange thing was that she was completely silent, just as I’ve heard that children who are drowning are.
Her little fingers clung on, and I threw myself at her because that’s what you do. You throw yourself at your child, you go through fire and water.
You do everything you can and then a little more.
And I grabbed hold of her, I reached forward and felt her greasy little fingers slowly slide out of my hand. Slipped out of my grip like a bar of soap.
She fell.
My child fell to the street, and I couldn’t stop it.
All I’d needed to do was to get there one second earlier, if I could just have got one step nearer while time seemed to stand still and the roar of the silence echoed in my ears.
In another life, in a parallel existence, I might have been able to save her.
But my child fell.
She fell from the third floor onto the street, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.
We were just a normal family.
It was a morning just like so many others, but afterwards nothing was ever the same.