Karin Alvtegen - Shadow

Afterwards, when it all became irrelevant, she hadn’t wanted to know. As though in a haze they had tried to recreate all the routines in order to contain the truth. A forced need to map out their daily lives in order to expel the consequences. But how did you take up the threads of a life you didn’t even know you wanted?

‘No, I’ve never heard that name.’

‘The letters are from the seventies. So you’ve never heard of anyone named Halina?’

‘No.’

He kept the letters! So typical of Axel! She would have to go to the house some day and see whether the idiot had saved anything else that should never be found.

‘They were unopened, so he can’t even have read them. I just thought you might know who she was.’

‘No, I have no idea.’

Three times Halina had now been denied. With each time, she came all the more alive in Alice’s mind.

Everything had seemed so surreal. One moment of her life had suddenly become decisive. A tiny parenthesis that was lifted out and became the headline.

Until Halina rang the doorbell the whole day had been so ordinary, if one ignored the unusual episode in the library with Axel. Normal time was being counted down, although no one had realised. Soon they would eat dinner, she would watch Rich Man, Poor Man on TV; everything had been completely normal.

An instant of madness.

She had been so afraid. So terribly afraid. Not when it happened, not when Axel ran out to the hall after Halina and she remained humiliated on the sofa. Not when she heard Halina’s continued threats about what she intended to do to destroy their lives. Not when she grabbed the heavy silver candlestick and headed for the angry voices. Not even when she stood there with the candlestick in her hand, looking down at Halina’s lifeless body had she been afraid.

All she had felt was amazement. She had looked at her hands holding the candlestick and was amazed that they were hers. They had obeyed instinct, an instinct as old as humankind – the readiness to kill in order to protect what is ours.

Somewhere inside her she had unknowingly carried the ability.

She had sacrificed so much for the little she had succeeded in achieving. A life in the shadow of the man so admired.

For that little bit she had shown herself capable of killing.

Not even then was she afraid.

Gerda’s shrieks of despair. Soundlessly they hit her ears.

Axel, who sank down next to Halina.

‘What have you done? What have you done? What have you done?’

Like a mantra he kept repeating the question, and not until she heard the sound of Axel’s voice did it come slinking in: the horror of the irrevocable.

Terrified she had looked at his hands trying to shake life into Halina in an attempt to save their future. The blankness that descended when his efforts proved futile.

The realisation entered her consciousness, striking her like a club and forcing her to her knees. What he had done she could never forgive.

That man, whose children she had borne, had turned her into a murderer.

She gave a start when she heard Jan-Erik’s voice on the phone.

‘Okay, I was just wondering. I’ll come and pick you up tomorrow morning at ten past eight.’

When Louise opened her eyes it was already light. She had lain awake for a long time listening to the sounds in the flat, but kept herself hidden behind closed eyes. Not until the front door banged and the silence had settled was she ready to emerge. When there was no one left to encounter.

For a long time she just lay there breathing, finding no reason to get up.

Three days had passed since she’d dropped the mask. When her sorrow had spilled out and overpowered her. Right before the eyes of her fellow actor. The farce they had been playing for so long. All the well-planned lines. The dismay she provoked when she suddenly stepped out of her role.

All she wanted was to connect. She had sacrificed her last ounce of self-respect and pleaded for his attention.

His silence spoke loud and clear.

She was nothing.

Not even worth refuting.

She had lain awake all night after quickly turning off the bedside lamp when she heard him in the hall, and then pretending to be asleep when he looked in. She was incapable of facing him in her new subservient position. She simply wanted to get away.

Away from what might have been.

Everything had been amplified yesterday. For the first time in more than fifteen years he had stepped out of her fantasies and was suddenly within sight: her ex, the man who had left her, but not her imagination. During the years with Jan-Erik he had become wrapped in an ever more dazzling glow.

A window table in a restaurant. Two children and a beautiful wife. They were laughing and listening to each other so attentively, sitting together. Like a real family.

While she had stood across the street, hidden in the entrance to a building. Unseen, she had watched, and painfully realised that he’d found what she had always been looking for. What she had wanted to give him back then, if only he’d let her stay.

If only he had wanted her.

Maybe there was something about her. Something she wasn’t aware of. Did she smell bad? She took a shower every day. Wasn’t what she said interesting enough? She tried to keep up with what was happening in the world. Was her body repulsive? She was in better shape than many women her age.

She didn’t know what it was, but there was definitely something. Something that made her impossible to love.

She curled up on her side and pulled up the covers. She tried to convince herself that there was some reason to get out of bed. The only thing she had to look forward to was the glass of wine she usually enjoyed while sitting in front of the TV after dinner. Before that there was a whole day to get through.

She found a note on the kitchen table. He was taking Alice to the clinic. She wondered what it was that had to be examined this time, which part of her body was attracting her mother-in-law’s attention now. She was thankful she wasn’t the one who had to drive her.

She was standing staring at the coffee-machine when the phone rang. She wondered whether it was worth the trouble to answer it. The cordless handset was lying on the kitchen table. She picked it up but didn’t recognise the number. A number in Göteborg. She put down the phone, but it wouldn’t stop ringing. Finally she gave up.

‘Louise Ragnerfeldt, hello?’

A click on the other end. This was the third time it had happened. Unless there was something wrong with the phone, somebody had been ringing and hanging up whenever she answered. She had heard that telesales people used that trick; calling several potential customers at the same time and taking the one who answered first. Annoyed, she went back to the coffee-machine. On principle she never bought anything from anyone who bothered her in her own home.

She wasn’t particularly hungry, but she filled a bowl with cornflakes and milk. She wasn’t tempted by coffee or the morning paper, so she sat at the table reading the milk carton:

Words to live by.

Courage: the ability to act without fear of consequences, usually for a good cause and fully aware of the risks.

She put down her spoon and looked up out of the window. If she were a courageous person everything would be different. She would be capable of hauling herself out of the place that had turned her into a shadow of what she wanted to be. All her expectations. All her dreams. All she had obediently packed away and put in a place she could no longer find.

But she was not a courageous person.

She had told her therapist she wouldn’t be coming back. She could no longer stand listening to herself talking about what she should do, only to leave the office too cowardly to follow her own good advice.