Caroline Åberg - Stockholm Noir

“No,” I finally answer.

Her forearm against the bar counter, it’s covered with thin strands of hair and I can almost touch the attraction that binds us.

I check the time on my phone again. “Could you wait a minute?”

She nods.

Outside the autumn sun disappears behind the roofs. I dial his number, walking back and forth in front of the restaurant while the call goes through. When he finally answers I tell him that he doesn’t need to come anymore, but I can hear that my voice sounds too harsh.

“What’s happened?”

“She’s not there.”

“Have you already been there? Yourself?”

I see the contours of her body inside, leaning slightly forward, her arms resting against the counter. I don’t really answer him, only repeat that she isn’t there.

“You’ve been there? What the hell are you thinking? You broke into the apartment? Without a warrant?”

“She’s not there. I know where she is. We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?” I answer, fatigued.

It’s cold, and I’ve left my jacket inside — I see it hanging next to her on the barstool. When I walk in again she looks at me quite openly, all the way from over by the bar.

Her apartment is dark, I sense that it has two rooms, that it’s completely symmetrical, one room on either side of the hall and maybe a kitchen between them. When she takes a step toward me I seize her wrists and put her hands around my neck.

“The bathroom,” I whisper in her ear, holding her wrists gently; she doesn’t try to free herself. I lower her arms and put them around my waist, concerned that she’ll place her hands on my shoulders if I let go of her and feel the holster straps through my jacket.

“There,” she nods toward a door behind my back.

I let go of her and walk into the small bathroom, closing the door carefully behind me. I hear her take off the jean jacket and hang it up, then she goes out to the room on the right. I remove my own jacket, the pressure in my chest, as if it belongs to someone else, a cry that isn’t mine. I unbuckle the holster and look around. It’s clean and impersonal, like a hotel bathroom, the only signs of her are the laundry basket in the tub and her clothes inside it, underpants, T-shirts; I want to open the medicine cabinet, but stop myself. Turn on the water instead, wash my face before I carefully bend down, protected by the running water, until kneeling on the floor, and I shove the holster with the pistol as far as I can under the bathtub. The feeling of pressure, as if I’m going to vomit. When I turn off the water I don’t recognize my face in the mirror, it is closed, locked, and I don’t know what’s going on behind it.

It’s still dark in the apartment, she hasn’t turned on any lights, I hesitate, enter the room on the right, and stop in the middle, not knowing where she is. Suddenly she’s close beside me, quiet and agile like an animal. We kiss softly and carefully, the sharp, cutting taste of alcohol and her thin, sinewy body turns beneath my hands. I pull up her T-shirt, she’s not wearing a bra, her breasts are so small they fit in my palms. Her nipples, big as raspberries, are hard between my fingers, she draws me closer, breathless I inhale her scent, feeling her angular hip bones against my own.

“Who are you?” She pushes me back at arm’s length, her eyes searching in the darkness. Black as coal against her pale face, her dyed hair reaches just below her shoulders and I know from the photo that her eyes are green, but it’s too dark to see their exact color.

She strokes my cheek gently. “Come,” she whispers, taking my hands and pulling me toward the bed. She removes my clothes, turns me over like a baby, strokes my back, touches me with firm, open hands, kisses the nape of my neck, takes one of my breasts in her hand, and with the other, presses an open palm against my cunt. It’s like being caressed by a pro, someone who knows my body by heart, someone trained in shooting it straight up. The serenity, the substance that brings everything to rest.

Afterward I try to make her out in the darkness, she’s lying on her side of the bed, naked, but I can barely see the outline of her body. She sits up, reaches across me, and gropes for something beside the night table, gets hold of her T-shirt and a pack of cigarettes, an ashtray and a lighter. She smokes slowly with her back against the wall and I recognize her from the photograph. There’s something self-sufficient in the way she smokes, in the discrete, defined movements distinguishing her body from its surroundings. I can understand why they leave her alone.

“I saw a performance,” she says slowly, exhaling the smoke. “A day or two ago. I never go to such things.”

She leans her head against the wall, waits and peers down at me in the bed. For a second I see Mia’s sleeping body, the nightmares that chase her, how sometimes when she wakes up she doesn’t understand that they’re over until several minutes later. The terror that shines in her eyes before the dreams flow away, until everything clears and grows still.

“A man ran from one corner of the stage, jumped high up, and fell straight to the floor. Then he got up and did it again. Again and again.” She slowly lowers one hand toward the blanket. “How can that be called a performance?”

Something warm shoots up behind my eyes and I smell her cunt through her crossed legs; she’s only wearing the red T-shirt. Plugged Recording . I wonder what it means, where she got it from. She exhales again, suddenly indifferent, before she stubs out the cigarette, gets up, climbs over me, and disappears into the bathroom.

When I wake up she’s sleeping beside me. I gather up my clothes, head to the bathroom, fish out my holster, and fasten it tightly under my arm. Quickly put on my jacket in the hall, then I stand for a while in the doorway to the bedroom and look at her before leaving; sleep smoothes out her face, as if she were dead or a newborn baby.

When I leave her, I choose the street down the hill toward the center of town, and before reaching the small square I sit awhile on a bench in front of a soccer field, beside a home for the elderly. I pull out my phone and call the task force. It doesn’t take more than fifteen minutes, they must have been nearby, I recognize them when they appear in the rotary where the slope ends, in unmarked vehicles. No sirens, just two big vans, one light, the other dark. I get up and go, hear them climbing the hill behind me, I push my hair out of my face, can smell her sex, she’s still there in my hands. Her jawline burned into my retina, just as lovely in reality as in the photo.

She’ll keep her beauty for a long time, long after our contemporaries have lost theirs to old age.

Translated by Laura A. Wideburg

Tantolunden

Curled up in bed with my old-fashioned composition book, I’m finally feeling warm after the ice-cold night. And after such a strange encounter. She wants me to write down her tale. That’s all. A tale of winter and chill; an ice-cold saga. How fitting, that we are now in the middle of winter, with an unbelievable amount of snow covered by a shiny hard crust.

Everything was strange from the start — I mean yesterday, after I returned from my vacation and went out to see how my garden cottage had fared in the bitter weather. I wrapped myself in warm clothes and walked down to Bergsunds Beach, and then along the footpath by the edge of the expansive frozen water, toward Tanto.

The entire hillside seemed to be covered in a thick layer of white frosting. On the rock wall, at the first, lower wooden staircase, icicles hung like huge organ pipes. The second staircase, the one I usually take up to my cottage, had turned into an icy ramp, with barely visible steps. Still, I managed in spite of my slippery boots.