Åke Edwardson - Sun and Shadow

He raised his right arm, and as far as he could see, there was nobody else in there holding up their own hand. Control.

It was obvious when he arrived that he was in control. Anybody with eyes to see could see that.

He wept.

He missed her. Her face once when she turned around on her bicycle and laughed.

He repeated the prophet’s name as a mantra. Repeated it over and over again. He kept the other god at bay. He kept the faces away and if he continued doing that they would disappear.

He wept.

Where were they? He was sitting here after all.

Perhaps those were his footsteps again out there. Or hers.

He’d gone past when there was a car parked outside the shop that could have been his. Then he’d run home. His heart in his mouth.

He stood up now, in the dark. He had nothing to drink with him this time.

Outside in the street the sun felt hot on his face.

Somebody looked at him as if he still had… as if he was in charge. You couldn’t see it from his clothes now, but you could see it about him even so. Now.

He walked uphill all the way, then down the slope to the hospital. He stood outside, waiting. Saw her. He knew exactly.

It had gotten to 5:00 P.M. There were six couples who had just introduced themselves. The man sitting to Winter‘sright felt a great need to describe his work.

The group of parents was mixed, some of them already had children. Winter recognized the midwife. It was the same one he’d met before, with Angela. Elise Bergdorff. She gave them ten minutes to write down what they wanted to know, what they hoped to get out of the meetings. There would be five meetings. By the end of March. Just before the event.

“Ask about reducing the pain,” Winter said.

“Ask yourself,” said Angela, giggling.

“Clothes,” Winter said. “What we should buy. How much you have to plan beforehand.”,

“But we’ve said we’re not going to plan anything.”

“No harm in asking.” He continued writing.

“What are you writing?” asked Angela, looking happy. Everybody looked happy, except for the man who wanted to go on about his work as if he couldn’t wait to get back to it.

I’ve never longed to get back to work, Winter thought. Not like that. This is more important.

“How do we know when the baby is hungry and when it’s full?”

“Good, Erik.”

“How much sleep?”

“For whom?”

“For me, of course,” he said. He started writing again after a short pause.

“What are you writing now?”

He looked up with a different expression on his face.

“Let me look,” Angela said, grabbing his notepad and reading it. She looked at him: “Are my eyes deceiving me? ‘Check police force addresses against the pornography replies.’ Is that one of the questions you want to ask the midwife?”

“I thought of something.”

“Erik…”

“Maternity care,” he said quickly. “You’ve talked about maternity care after the reorganization.”

“Write it down,” she said. He didn’t. “I mean it literally,” she said.

The midwife offered them coffee, as this was the first time. In future perhaps they might like to take turns in bringing something nice with them, if they felt like it.

I can bake some brownies, he thought.

The midwife talked about relationships, how things change during pregnancy and after the birth. The men and women looked at one another.

“The woman is more busy with the baby,” the man said on his right, who had a job to get back to. “The man feels that she’s devoting a lot of time to the baby.”

“Surely the man is busy with the baby as well?” Winter said. Was that really me speaking? he wondered.

It’s a matter of keeping your love alive after the baby’s come, Angela thought. What this is all about is meeting others who are in the same boat. It could be of benefit to us.

There was a brief discussion. Perhaps the idea was that they would get help in improving their roles, Winter thought. As parents. Being mothers and fathers. Roles. Could you call it that? Some people never played a role, ever.

They walked home. The smell of winter had started to fade away, together with the smell of the New Year rockets and Bengal lights. The name kept coming back to him: Bengal lights. Pretty.

“What did you think of the group?”

“Hmm…”

“We’ll meet again when we’ve all had our babies.”

“Do you think the advertising chap will be there then?”

“Will you be there then?”

“You shouldn’t answer a question with another question.”

They waited for a green light before crossing over the Allé.

“He’ll be there,” she said. “I’ve heard it’s quite usual for the groups to carry on meeting afterward. Celebrate a one-year anniversary, a two-year anniversary, and suddenly we’re all great friends.”

We must first get through what lies ahead unscathed, he thought.

“Sounds nice,” he said.

“Do you really think so?”

“I think I do.”

They had reached the entrance. It was a clear evening, like so many others that winter. The Pressbyrå newsstand near the old university building created the atmosphere of a small-town square, Winter had sometimes thought. He didn’t know much about small-town squares, but he could recognize the feeling. He’d sometimes felt that when he’d come home alone late in the evening. Perhaps it was a vague yearning deep down.

Angela took a deep breath.

“What terrific air,” she said. “For a big town.”

“This is a little town,” Winter said. People were shopping at Pressbyrå. He could hear music coming from the restaurant on the corner. The buildings on the other side of the park loomed skyward. Trams looked like jerky sparklers shooting off in all directions. A few youngsters walked past and their voices reached them as fragments of words borne along by the breeze. They vanished into the Java café at the crossroads. “So, let’s go in and have a café con leche,” he said.

They couldn’t find any report about a shoplifter in Manhattan Livs, also known as Krokens Livs.

“There are circumstances when it’s better to give a caution rather than to report somebody,” Ringmar said.

“There’s something that doesn’t add up,” Winter said.

“Calm down now, Erik.”

“I could have used that report.”

“You have other stuff to read.”

He had the text of the advertisements in front of him. It wasn’t the best piece of writing he’d ever come across:

We are an average couple coming up to middle age in the Gothenburg area who still have a healthy curiosity and appetite for sex. We are looking for a man as she is going to be the main attraction. 100% discretion. We are lovers of soap and water. Completely healthy of course. If the personal chemistry is right we can have a really juicy time together.

“A really juicy time together,” Ringmar said, who could see that Winter had read the whole text.

“Lovers of soap and water!”

“Fucking perverse, that’s what it is. Sex with a bar of soap.”

Winter smiled, then turned serious.

“I’m beginning to wonder about this line of investigation,” he said. “There’s nothing to indicate that the man we’re after replied to this.”

“No.”

“The Valkers must have destroyed the replies,” Winter said. “Why?”

“Perhaps it was the murderer.”

“Yes.”

“He-assuming it’s the same guy-was looking for something in the Martells’ flat.”

“Yes.”

“What do you think about the replies?”

The pile of responses to the Martells’ ad was next to the two ads themselves. The one submitted by the Martells was worded roughly the same as that from the Valkers, possibly a bit more cautiously. A quick read-through might suggest that they were looking for somebody to have coffee with.