Lars Kepler - The Nightmare

They moved into his bedroom and sank deeply onto his bed. Her hands trembled as she unzipped and pulled off her skirt, and for a moment it seemed she would pull off her panties at the same time, but that’s not what she had intended, and her hands kept them on as Axel pulled down her kneesocks.

“What’s wrong?” he whispered. “Do you want to stop?”

“I don’t know-do you?”

“No,” he said.

“I’m just a little nervous,” she said honestly.

“You’re older than I am.”

“Yes, you’re still just seventeen-I’m robbing the cradle,” she said, smiling.

Axel’s heart pounded as he pulled down her panties. She lay still as he kissed her stomach, her small breasts, her throat, her chin, her lips. She opened her legs and he lay on her and felt how she slowly pressed her thighs against his hips. Her cheeks flushed bright red as he slid inside her. She pulled him close and stroked his back and neck and sighed every time he sank into her.

Once they finished, panting, there was a thin layer of sweat between their nude bodies. They lay wrapped in each other’s arms, eyes closed, as they fell into a sweet sleep.

It was light outside when Axel woke up on the day he would lose everything. He and Greta had not shut the curtains. They’d fallen asleep together in the bed and slept the entire night.

Axel slowly got up and looked down at Greta, who slept with a completely calm face and the thick blanket crumpled about her. He walked to the door and stopped next to the mirror and looked at his naked seventeen-year-old body for a while. Then he continued into the music room. He closed the door to the bedroom softly and walked over to the grand piano. He took his violin out of its case and tuned it. He put it to his chin, went to stand by the window, and looking out at the winter morning and the snow being blown from the roofs in long veils, he began to play Maurice Ravel’s Tzigane from memory.

The piece begins with a sorrowful Romany melody, slow and measured, but then the tempo begins to increase. The melody echoes faster and faster in upon itself as a blistering, split-second memory of a summer night.

It’s an extremely fast piece.

Axel was playing because he was happy. He wasn’t thinking. His fingers ran and danced like eddies and ripples in a stream.

Axel started to smile. He was thinking of a painting his grandfather had in the salon. His grandfather had said it was the most apt and glowing version of Nacken by Ernst Josephson. As a child, Axel had loved the legends surrounding this mystical being whose violin music was so beautiful it lured people to their deaths, beautiful deaths drowning in the pool.

At that moment, Axel felt that he was just like the Nacke, a young man surrounded by water as he played. Except Axel was happy. That was the greatest difference between Axel and the Josephson painting.

His bow leaped over the strings at amazing speed. He didn’t care that some of the bow’s taut hair broke and danced in the air with the music.

This is how Ravel should be played, he thought. Not exotically but happily. Ravel is a young composer, a happy composer.

Axel let the final notes resonate in the body of the violin and then seem to whirl away like the light snow on the roof outside. He lowered his bow and was about to bow toward the snow outside when he realized that someone was behind him.

He turned and saw Greta in the doorway. She held the blanket around her body and her eyes were dark and strange as she looked at him.

Axel frowned at her stricken expression.

“What’s wrong?”

She didn’t answer. She swallowed loudly. A pair of large tears began to run down her cheeks.

“Greta, what’s the matter?” he asked, insistently.

“You told me that you hadn’t practiced,” she said in a monotone.

“No, I… I…” he stammered. “I told you that I learned new pieces easily.”

“Congratulations.”

“What are you thinking?” he said, aghast. “It’s not what you think!”

She shook her head.

“I can’t believe I could have been so stupid,” she said.

He set down the violin and bow, but she was already closing the bedroom door behind her. Axel snatched up a pair of jeans he’d left hanging on the back of a chair and pulled them on. Then he knocked on the door.

“Greta? May I come in?”

There was no answer, and with that, a black clump of worry settled in his stomach. In a little while, she came out of the bedroom fully dressed. She didn’t even look at him as she put her violin in its case and gathered up her belongings to leave him alone.

The concert hall was full. Greta was the first to play. When she saw him, she looked away. She wore a blue velvet dress and a necklace with a heart pendant.

Axel sat alone in the dressing room and waited with half-closed eyes. It was absolutely silent. Only a small sound could be heard behind a dusty plastic fan guard. His little brother came into the room.

“Aren’t you going to sit with Mamma?” Axel asked.

“No, I’m too nervous. I can’t watch you perform. I’ll just sit here and wait.”

“Has Greta started yet?”

“Yes, it sounds good.”

“Which piece did she choose? Was it Tartini’s violin sonata?”

“No, something by Beethoven.”

“That’s good,” Axel muttered.

They sat together silently and said nothing more. After a while, there was a knock at the door. Axel stood up and opened it. A woman told him that he would be next.

“Good luck,” said Robert.

“Thanks,” Axel said. He picked up his violin with its bow and followed the woman through the hallway.

Great applause sounded from the audience. Axel caught a brief glimpse of Greta and her father as they hurried into Greta’s dressing room.

Axel walked close to the wings and had to wait through an introduction. When he heard his name, he walked into the center of the spotlight and smiled at the audience. A murmur arose when he announced his selection, the Tzigane by Maurice Ravel.

He put his violin to his chin and lifted his bow. He began to play the sorrowful introduction and then sped up the tempo to the impossible speed. The audience seemed to hold its breath. He could hear that he was playing brilliantly, but this time the melody didn’t sparkle. His playing was no longer happy. It was as if he had become the Nacke, with a hectic, feverish sorrow. Three minutes into the piece, the notes were falling like rain in the night, and then he began to purposefully skip a few. He slowed, played off-key, and finally broke off the piece completely.

The concert hall was silent.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and then he walked off the stage.

The audience clapped politely. His mother got up from her seat in the audience and followed him. She stopped him in the walkway.

“Come here, my boy,” she said as she put her hands on his shoulders.

Then she stroked his cheek and her voice was warm as she said, “That was remarkable, the best interpretation I’ve ever heard.”

“Forgive me, Mamma.”

Her face stiffened, seemed to pull in on itself. “Never,” she replied, and she turned away from Axel and walked out of the concert hall.

Axel went to the dressing room for his coat, but he was met by Herbert Blomstedt outside the dressing-room door.

“That was remarkable, my boy,” he said in a very sad voice. “Until you began to pretend you could no longer play.”

The house reverberated with silence when Axel returned home. It was already late at night. He trudged up to the top-floor apartment, in through his music room, and then to his bedroom. He shut the door behind him. He still heard the music in his head, how it had sounded until he began to drop notes, slow the tempo unexpectedly, break off the piece in the middle.