John Lindqvist - Handling The Undead

It was like opening a vacuum-pack of coffee. Anna sank into herself a little and began to cry. Mahler cursed himself inwardly. Not fair play at all.

'Anna, forgive me. I didn't mean to…'

'You did.' She amazed him by straightening up and wiping her tears with the back of her hand. 'I know full well that you don't give a damn about me.'

'Now you're not being fair,' Mahler started to lose his grip and back-tracked. 'Haven't I been taking care of you this whole time? Every day…'

'Like a package, yes. Something to do. And now the package is in the way, and you have to move it. You have never done anything out of consideration for me. It's your own guilty conscience you're looking after. Give me a cigarette.'

Mahler stopped his hand half-way to his breast pocket. 'Anna, we don't have time…'

'We have time. A cigarette, I said.'

Anna took it and the lighter, lit up and sat down in the armchair, on the very edge of the seat. Mahler stayed where he was.

'What would you say,' Anna started, 'if I told you that this whole ti me T really wanted to be left alone? That I think it's been a complete drag to have you running in and out every day. I've been eating at the hot dog stand down on the corner, I haven't needed your food. But I let you do it so that you would feel better.'

'That 's not true,' Mah lcr said. 'You mean to say I should have let you lie there alone, day after day…'

' I haven't been alone. Some evenings when I felt up to it I've called someone I know and… '

'Oh you have, have you?' Mahler's voice sounded more taunting than he intended.

'Oh give me a break. Each to their own. At least I've grieved for Elias. I'm not sure what you've been grieving for. Some kind of forlorn hope of atonement. But I'm not doing you any more favours.' Anna put out the half-smoked cigarette and walked into the bedroom.

Mahler stood motionless, his arms hanging at his sides. He was not abashed. What Anna said about him made no impact. It was possible that it was true, but he did not think so. The new information she had shared with him, however… He wouldn't have thought she had it in her.

Elias lay on the bed with his arms outstretched, a helpless alien. Anna sat on the edge with her finger in his curled fist.

'Look,' she said.

'Yes,' Mahler said and pressed his lips together in order not to add, 'I know.' Instead he went and sat down on the other side of the bed and let Elias curl his other hand around his finger. They sat like this for a while, each with a finger in his hand. Mahler thought he could hear sirens in the distance.

'What should we give him?' Anna asked.

Mahler told her about the salt. There was the germ of acquiescence in Anna's question, but he did not want to push it any further. Anna would have to decide now. As long as she didn't make the wrong decision.

'What about sugar?' she asked. 'A glucose solution?'

'Maybe,' Mahler said. 'We can try.'

Anna nodded, kissed the back of Elias' hand, coaxed out her finger and said, 'Let's go then.'

Mahler drove the car to the front door and Anna carried out Elias, wrapped up in the sheet, laid him on the back seat and crawled in after him. The car was a sauna after having been parked in the lot all day. Mahler rolled down both windows and popped the sunroof.

Up by the square he parked in the shade and half-ran to the drugstore. He placed ten packets of grape sugar and four bottles of lotion in a basket. A couple of syringes. He ended up lingering in front of the baby items. Then took several baby bottles as well. Made sure they were the kind with only one hole in the nipple.

He did not want to leave Anna and Elias in the car for too long, but the selection in the drugstore bewildered him. His gaze travelled over the shelves of band-aids, mosquito repellent, anti-fungal cream, vitamins and liniments. There must be something else that could help.

At random, he picked out a number of jars of vitamins and herbal remedies.

The lady at the register glanced at his body, then at the items he was purchasing. Mahler saw the cogs move beneath her businesslike mask, trying to see a connection between this amount of sugar, bottles, body lotion-and him.

He paid cash, took his over-stuffed single bag and was wished a nice day.

They were silent the whole way to Norrtalje. Anna sat in the back with Elias, in her lap, staring fixedly out the front with his finger in her hand. As Mahler took the turn-off to Kapellskar she asked, 'Why don't you think they will come looking out there?'

'I don't know,' Mahler said. 'I guess I'm hoping they're not so… motivated. And it is more relaxing out there.'

He turned on the radio. There was no music on the public stations, only the commercial stations carried on as if nothing had happened. He kept P1 on for a while, but it added little to their knowledge. Eight reliving were still missing.

'I wonder what the other seven arc doing right now,' Mahler said,;llld turned it off.

'Something similar,' Anna said. 'How can you really think we're doing the right thing and everyone else is wrong?'

Mahler lifted his gaze from the road in order to turn his head and look at Anna for a couple of seconds. Her question was genuine.

'I don't know if we are doing the right thing,' he said. 'But I know that they don't know either. In my line of work… you would be amazed at how many times the authorities do something without knowing why, without knowing the consequences… only so it will look as if they're doing something.' Now they were on their way he dared to ask something himself. 'Don't you think we're doing the right thing?'

Anna was quiet for a moment. In the rear view mirror Mahler saw that she looked down at Elias and a swift grimace flashed across her face. 'Can you open the window a little more?'

Mahler rolled down the window as far as it would go. Anna leaned back so far that her head tipped back over the neck rest. She spoke into the ceiling, 'Why doesn't he stop smelling?'

Mahler glanced back again. Elias' dark green face with its black spots peeked out of the sheet; it made him look even more like a wrapped mummy.

'I don't want to give him up,' Anna said. 'That's all.'

The vegetation around the cottage was overgrown and dried up. The enormous honeysuckle vine around the porch had grown tremendously at the beginning of the summer, but was now a ropy tangle, as if the porch had been wrapped in packing materials.

Mahler stopped the car ten metres from the front door and turned off the engine.

'Well,' he said and looked out over the brown grass. 'Here we are at last.'

The cottage lay at the end of the loop that was Koholma vacation area. You had to walk a couple of hundred metres through the forest to get to the water, but when Mahler got out of the car he still felt the seaside quality in the air. He drew a deep breath and the promise of freedom filled his lungs.

Now he knew what he had been thinking.

The cottage felt more secure than the apartment. Of course it was the sea that gave you that feeling. The great blue out there. If they came, there was always the option of…leaving. Out to the islands.

The reason that he had even been able to afford the house fifteen years ago now announced itself: a dull thundering filtered through the forest, made the car body vibrate slightly. He sighed.

Five hundred metres to the south lay the Kapellskar Ferry Terminal. Since ferry traffic to Finland and Aland had increased fifteen or twenty years earlier and the ferries had grown and become a recreation for the masses, the real estate values in the adjacent areas had fallen by almost half. It was not quite as bad as living next to an airport, but almost. The ferries came and went around the clock and it would take almost a week to learn not to hear them.