Hakan Nesser - The Stranglers Honeymoon

Moerckstraat.

She didn’t like it.

Not the name of the street. Not the drab, brown-coloured building with its three low-ceilinged storeys. Not her room, not the flat, nor the dull, characterless district with its straight, narrow streets and dirty cars and shops, and not even a single tree.

I’m sixteen years old now, she had begun to think. Three more years at grammar school, then I can move away from here. Then I can look after myself.

Her conscience pricked her once more as she remained standing by the telephone, looking out of the window over the top of the net curtains at the equally dirty-brown façades on the other side of the street. The narrow, dark windows that were in the shade for eleven hours out of twelve even on quite sunny days like today.

She remembered a line in a play by Strindberg: ‘You have to feel sorry for human beings.’ Not just sorry for myself or for Mum, but for everybody. Every man jack. But being aware of that doesn’t make it any better.

She liked having little conversations about life with herself. She didn’t write them down, but kept them in the back of her mind and thought about them occasionally. Perhaps because it helped to place her in a context with other people. A sort of gloomy solidarity.

Reminded her that she wasn’t so different, despite everything. That life was like this.

That her mother was just the same as the mothers of other sixteen-year-old girls, and that loneliness was just as devastating for everybody else as well.

And maybe her mum would get well again one of these days — even if that fat psychologist woman hardly made it sound as if she believed it would happen. Better to keep an eye on it and try to keep it under control with the aid of medication. Better not to hope for too much. Better to keep your sights low.

Manic depression . That was what it was called. And it was disciplined medication, the psychologist had said.

Monica sighed. Shrugged, and took the recipe out of the file.

Chicken in orange with rice and broccoli sauce.

The chicken pieces had already been purchased and were in the refrigerator — she would need to buy the rest at Rijkman’s. The rice, spices, oranges, salad. And ice cream sorbet for afters. She had noted it all down, and her mother had made her read out the whole list over the telephone.

Manic, she thought. A sure sign that her mother was moving into a manic phase. That was presumably why she had missed her train. She had been to tend the grave in Herzenhoeg and stayed there too long — not for the first time.

But her late arrival and the evening meal business were not a problem. Not as far as her mother was concerned: there were virtually no problems when she was in this state. She was experiencing what would be a brief high — it seldom lasted longer than a week. While it lasted there was no reason why everything shouldn’t go like clockwork.

And the medicine was doubtless here at home in the bathroom cupboard. As usual. Monica didn’t even need to check in order to know that.

Wouldn’t it be better to postpone the dinner? she had suggested. He was due to arrive at eight o’clock; surely he wouldn’t want to hang around until half past eleven waiting for her mother to get home?

Her mother had explained that of course he would want to hang around: that was something an innocent sixteen-year-old couldn’t possibly understand. She had already checked with him when he rang her mobile. So could she please be a good daughter and do what her mother had asked her to do?

Monica tore the page out of her notebook and took the necessary money out of the housekeeping kitty. She saw that it was already half past five, so she had better get moving if she was going to avoid disappointing her mother’s lover.

Lover? she thought as she pushed her trolley around the shelves, trying to find what she was looking for. She didn’t like the word, but that’s what her mother called him.

My lover.

Monica preferred the actual person to what her mother called him, in fact. Thought he was much better. For once.

Just think if this could be it, she thought. Just think if they could make up their minds to try and live together.

But it seemed pretty unlikely. As far as she knew they had only met a few times — and most of them did a runner after three or four.

Nevertheless she allowed herself the childish hope that he would move in with them, and she tried to conjure up his image in her mind’s eye. Quite tall and well built. Probably around forty. Hair greying at the temples, and warm eyes that reminded her a little of her dad’s.

And he had such a nice voice, that was perhaps the most important thing of all. Yes, now that she came to think of it, that was nearly always how she judged people.

By their voice, and the way in which they shook hands. Those were two things that couldn’t be falsified. That was no doubt something she had read in another girls’ magazine ages ago, but it didn’t matter. It was true, that was the main thing. You could lie with so many other things: your lips, your eyes, your gestures.

But never with your voice and the way you shook hands.

As far as she was concerned, he scored especially highly on those two aspects of character: a calm, deep voice which gave words exactly their right value and never rushed things, and a hand which was big and warm and neither pressed too hard nor felt as if the owner would rather pull it away. It was almost a pleasure in itself to shake hands with him.

She smiled slightly at her thoughts, and turned her attention to her shopping list. What a brilliant assessor of human character I am, she thought. I’ve only met him for about ten minutes in all. I ought to become a psychologist or something.

As she prepared the food, she began thinking — as usual — about Loneliness. With a capital L: that was how she often saw it written. Presumably in order to give it some sort of extra dignity.

Wondering whether she would be able to overcome it now that she was starting in a new class at school, or if everything would turn out to be the same old story. Loneliness, her only reliable companion.

Would she still not dare to invite new classmates to her home? Because of a mum who put both herself and her daughter to shame the moment anybody new stepped over the threshold.

Or posed a threat of doing so, at least. Who could lie under a blanket on the sofa in the living room in broad daylight — with a carving knife and a bottle of sleeping pills on the coffee table beside her, begging in a loud voice for her daughter to help her to commit suicide.

Or float around in the bathtub barely alive, surrounded by her own vomit and with two empty wine bottles standing on the floor.

Or at the other extreme: as high as a kite, instructing young twelve-year-olds about the most efficient ways of masturbating — since sex lessons at school nowadays were such a lot of rubbish.

No, she thought. No, three more years will be more than enough — I don’t want to end up like that.

And the men. The boyfriends who came and went, always during the manic weeks in the spring and the autumn, each of them even worse than the previous one, none of whom she ever saw more than three or four times.

Apart from Henry Schitt, who claimed to be a writer and smoked hash all day long for four weeks, either in the bathroom or out on the balcony, until Monica plucked up enough courage to phone Auntie Barbara up in Chadow.

Auntie Barbara hadn’t intervened personally, of course: she never did. But she had arranged for two social workers to call round and throw out Henry. And for her sister to be placed in medical care for a few hours.

And to be given some more medicine.

That was in the spring, a year-and-a-half ago; and things had in fact become rather better after that. As long as the medication wasn’t left unused in the bathroom cupboard because her mother had been feeling so well that she didn’t think she needed to take it any more.