Karin Alvtegen - Shame

Self-abuse is what it’s called .

And it was as she had suspected. She received the news the same way she would have listened to road directions. She merely asked a few supplementary questions for clarification. In the evening she passed on the news to Göran in the same way.

‘She’s blind. They confirmed it at the check-up today. We have to go back in two weeks.’

From that day everything began to crumble. The last desperate remnants of their attempt to break away finally disappeared, and all that remained were shame, remorse and dread. The regret and the guilt ate through her body like acid, the body she hated more than anything on earth, and that never did her anything but harm. The same body on which the palpable proof of her sin was now dependent every four hours. An evil tree bears evil fruit. For the sake of sin each human being stands with real guilt before God and is threatened by His wrath and punishing justice. The overwhelming, dark desire for evil is propagated and is passed down from generation to generation, and this inherited sin is the cause of all other sins in thought, word and deed .

In her pride she had rebelled against God, and the punishment was more loathsome than she ever could have imagined. He had kept silent and ignored her, and He had turned His wrath on her offspring instead. He would let the next generation bear the punishment that she herself should have borne.

And then came the letter from her parents. They had heard it through the grapevine. They had not forgiven her, but the whole Congregation would offer prayers for her child who had been struck by God’s righteous retribution.

A few months passed. Göran grew more and more taciturn during the hours he was home. He didn’t even talk about the new flat anymore, the one they were supposed to move to in early summer. Two rooms and a kitchen on the ground floor, 68 square metres with a balcony. And a bathroom. Finally, they would get a bathroom so she could wash herself properly.

She had already started to pack because she needed something to do; it had become harder and harder to sit still. She had just opened the linen cupboard in the hall above the stairs and was reaching for a stack of sheets. They had got them from Göran’s parents, his initials were primly embroidered on them in blue. She saw that the girl was crawling across the threshold from the bedroom, that she bumped her head on the doorjamb and just sat there. There was no gate to protect her from the stairs. Maj-Britt walked past her and went over to the packing carton that was set up on the bed and placed the sheets inside. When she turned round she hit her shin on the bedstead. The pain was brief and explosive and only lasted a second, but it was as if the physical sensation swept away a barrier inside her. Everything turned white. The scream came first. She screamed until her throat hurt, but it didn’t help. The girl was scared by her wailing, and Maj-Britt saw out of the corner of her eye that she was sobbing and crawling farther out in the hall. Closer to the stairs. But her rage could not be quelled; it grew ever stronger, and she grabbed hold of the carton in front of her with both hands and hurled it with all her might at the wall.

‘I hate You! Hate You, do You hear that? You know that I was ready to sacrifice everything but it was never enough!’

She clenched her fists and shook them at the ceiling.

‘Do You hear me? Do You? Can’t You answer just once when someone speaks to You?’

All her pent-up fury exploded and gushed out like a tidal wave. She felt it throbbing in her temples and she tore the sheets off the bed and heaved them across the room. A picture on the wall was caught in their sweep and there was no gate on the stairs out in the hall, and now her blind daughter could no longer be seen, she had disappeared beyond the door frame. But something could no longer be stopped, something had once and for all shattered inside her, and now it had to get out or she would explode.

‘You think You can win, don’t You? That I’m going to pray and beg Your forgiveness now that it’s all too late, now that You’ve made her take the punishment I was supposed to have. Is that what You think, is it?’

There was nothing left to throw, so she picked up the carton and threw it one more time. She stood in the bedroom and threw a carton even though there was no gate in front of the stairs out there in the hall.

‘I can get along without You from now on, do You hear me?’

And afterwards she remembered that just at that moment she had to go out in the hall because there was no gate in front of the stairs and her blind daughter was alone out there on the floor, but she never made it that far.

She didn’t scream when she fell.

There were only a couple of thuds and then everything was quiet.

There was something special about the nights. To be awake while others were sleeping. When everything had quieted down, when the thoughts of all people were gathered up and sorted into various dream states, leaving the air free. It was as if it became easier to think then, as if her musings had an easier time emerging when they didn’t have to make way for all the rushing traffic. During her student days she had often turned night into day, and whenever possible she preferred to study for her exams at night. When the air was free.

Now the night had become associated with danger, for precisely the same reason. The fewer distractions and disturbing elements there were, the more often the field was clear. Something in there was protesting and seeking contact with her, and the quieter the night got, the harder it was to avoid hearing. Something in there blamed her, despite her brave attempts to bring about order and justice, and she had to watch out that she was not dragged down into the depths. She could only imagine what it would feel like to end up there; the slightest intimation of such a state was enough to scare her out of her wits. For twenty-three years she had managed to keep a distance from the darkness that was growing ever denser, but now it had grown so vast that it had almost reached the surface. The only way to maintain the slight distance that was still left was to stay in motion at all times. Because there was an urgency, a real urgency. She could feel in her whole body how much urgency there was. If only she made a decent effort, it would be possible to make everything right.

She had turned on the radio to drown out the worst of the silence. Pernilla’s papers were spread out on the big oak kitchen table that was specially built to stand right where it stood. With room for ten people. There was no tiredness in her body, it was almost 3:30 in the morning and she was into her third glass of a 1979 Glen Mhor. She had bought the whisky during a trip abroad to supplement the exclusive contents of her bar cabinet, and it had made a good impression on some well-chosen guests. But it functioned equally well as an anaesthetic.

She punched in Pernilla’s income on her calculator and totalled it up again, but it didn’t help. The situation was really as bad as Pernilla had said. Daniella would get a child’s stipend, but it was based on Mattias’s general supplementary pension and wouldn’t be very much. She had searched online and found out how to calculate it. Before the diving accident they had lived hand to mouth, working a bit here and there, saving enough to take a trip once in a while. After the accident Mattias had worked a little, but the jobs hadn’t been particularly well-paid. Pernilla had been right. They would be forced to move if they didn’t get some help.

Not until she heard the morning paper land on the hall floor did she get up and go into the bedroom. The box of sleeping pills lay on her nightstand and she pressed a pill out of the foil pack and swallowed it with the dregs from a glass of water that had stood there since the night before. She wasn’t tired in the least, but she had to start work again and she had to get a few hours’ sleep. If she took the pill now and stayed up for half an hour she would fall asleep as soon as she lay down.