Caroline Åberg: Stockholm Noir

— No, she died as I got there.

— Did you see anything else? Rafel grumbled, as he crossed over toward a gas station near the bigger intersection, a frown on his face. His voice sounded harsh and hollow, as if he spoke through a pipe. And despite the seriousness of the moment, Berit felt a shockwave of desire when he turned his dark, inscrutable gaze toward her. Only then did she realize how obscene she must look with her skirt rolled up, revealing her lace panties and garter belt. She clumsily pulled her skirt down while she answered that she couldn’t see so clearly in the fog, but she repeated the word the girl’s lips had tried to utter: Cosmos.

Rafel turned into the gas station and dropped her off. He’d been forbidden to drive and didn’t want the cops to find out, he explained sullenly before clattering away.

Fifteen minutes later, in the din of shrieking sirens and the crackling of a police radio, Berit gave her minimal testimony at the gas station. A cop asked how she felt, would she need “crisis counseling”? But Berit was content to be dropped off on a side street that led down to a group of protected houses where she rented a room. It was a paradoxical idyll, wedged between the water and a forested hill, just below the constant stream of traffic on a nearby road that connected the southern part of the city and the many suburbs along the subway’s southbound Green Line. It was green too in Brovattnet — a lush garden of fruit trees and berry bushes, all well-maintained and yielding huge harvests.

To forget the sight of the young woman whose eyes were numb with pain as rebar pierced her body was, however, impossible. Being impaled must have been excruciating. After a couple of hours in a cold sweat, making fruitless attempts at falling asleep, Berit got out of bed and carefully walked down the creaky stairs. She didn’t want to wake Thea. Thea was a writer and so easily disturbed that she really shouldn’t have had tenants. Thus Berit and Thea scarcely talked to each other, which was fine with Berit; she was a recluse herself. In any event, the blinking blue lights from the bridge abutment must have troubled Thea’s sacred nocturnal slumber, for there was light coming from the kitchen.

As Berit stood in the kitchen doorway she heard a gruff voice. A moment later she met his piercing gaze. She couldn’t stop the feeling throbbing through her genitals nor the glow that rushed up, making her face flush. She suffered a “little death” and had to hold onto the doorframe. Rafel stared straight into her innermost self. Berit excused herself and poured a glass of water before shamefacedly padding back up to her room in her nightgown. Maybe it wasn’t so strange that Rafel sat in Thea’s kitchen. He and Thea had been childhood friends in the red-hot seventies, she’d mentioned it once when he’d come by to borrow some tools from the shed. But running into him twice that day still seemed odd.

The dying girl’s gaze and Rafel’s expression in Thea’s kitchen revolved over and over in her mind, and for some peculiar reason she felt guilty, though it was unclear of what. Certainly it was irritating that Rafel brought her to orgasm simply with his eyes, but he probably hadn’t noticed anything.

She didn’t manage to fall asleep until after the early-morning trains had started rumbling over the nearby bridge, and only slept for a short time. She woke abruptly to the shrill sound of a crow cawing while it peered through her window. The day was cloudy, fog still thick over the little yard outside the house. Rafel’s car was nowhere to be seen.

The walls of the room seemed to be closing in on her, as if wanting to push her out. After a quick shower, she got dressed, hoping that the hectic pace of her job at the hospital would make her feel normal again.

On the way to work she kept looking over her shoulder. She felt persecuted, which in a way she was, persecuted by the images in her brain. The obsessive thought of putting herself in the impaled girl’s place wouldn’t leave her. Had it been deliberate? Had the girl seen the iron rods hidden in the fog? If she’d chosen to die, wouldn’t there have been easier ways? Berit stopped on Skanstull Bridge and scouted the accident scene. Dying should be simple, like walking over a bridge. Dying ought to be a slip out of the material world, not something to get stuck in, not being racked by rusty iron spikes, as if life and matter wanted to leave a last reminder of their harshness.

That evening, when Berit came home to Brovattnet, Thea was so sociable that Berit almost suspected something was up. She had intended to go to bed right away and reclaim her lost night of sleep but was instead treated to roast beef and potatoes au gratin and a full-bodied red wine. Thea held forth on the hardships of being a writer and the necessity to sometimes sweep all this aside and to eat and drink well. Despite her youth, Berit knew that effusive cordiality almost always disguised ulterior motives. But the food was delicious, and it definitely beat what she might otherwise grab from a sausage stand. Not until cheese was served and a second bottle of wine uncorked did Thea’s real purpose emerge.

— Why, yes, she said, and pushed back her oat-blond, shoulder-length hair. As a writer I have a well-trained sense for the unsaid, almost as if I possess a sort of X-ray vision sometimes. Somehow I can hear what others are thinking.

Then I hope that you hear what I’m thinking, Berit reflected, namely that your opinion of yourself is way off.

— Exactly, Thea laughed, sensing Berit’s skepticism in her silence. You think I’m up on my high horse, and I understand. Nobody is particularly thrilled when someone comes along and says she has the ability to read their mind. But to the point: you’re pining for Rafel.

Berit stopped chewing; she felt as if she’d just swallowed an ox.

— No harm done, Thea continued, and moreover you’re not the only one. That’s where I was heading. I don’t know if you know about Cozmo LSD.

Berit remembered what the dying girl had rattled out: Cosmos. Or was it only Cosmo?

— It’s spelled with a z, Thea said, and it is — or was — Rafel’s professional pseudonym. So you didn’t know; there’s scarcely anyone else who does. He was always made up to be unrecognizable when he was onstage. I took care of all communication with his record company. He was quite successful, on the top of the charts awhile too.

— What did the music sound like? Berit asked.

Thea went into the living room and came back steeped in echoing gloomy harmonies sung in Swedish in a serene and plaintive voice. But without a doubt Rafel’s voice. A shudder went through Berit.

— You look perplexed, said Thea. I can understand. That’s not the immediate picture of Rafel when you see him, am I right? But don’t we all have dual personalities in some regard? Thea turned off the music and refilled the wine glasses, then continued: Cozmo LSD later changed his name to Cozmo Limited under pressure from the record company. But Cozmo’s cult status grew along with the piles of fan letters, which I also took care of. Rafel never appeared onstage as himself, he avoided publicity, and for every performance that the record company demanded of him, he grew increasingly afraid of being recognized as just another mortal , so to speak. But his status grew alongside his shyness, and at one concert some girls climbed up on the stage, Rafel fled, and the throngs of fans followed the girls’ example; in the ensuing panic, several fans were badly trampled and had to be taken to the hospital. A sixteen-year-old girl died of injuries. Afterward Rafel decided to back out and kill Cozmo Limited. Through me he sent out a press release and then more or less went underground.