Jensen Beach: Swallowed by the Cold: Stories

“My god,” Helle said.

“It happened early this afternoon. On the canal path. We may have seen it. I told him we didn’t see anything. We would have stopped if we’d seen anything.”

“Told who, Henrik? Who was on the phone?” Lisa asked. “Henrik?”

“Fredrik Holm,” he said.

“The tennis player?” asked Lisa.

Henrik pushed his silverware across his plate loudly, and refilled his glass. “Yes,” he said.

“Lisa,” Helle said, “is that the man with one arm? The tennis player with only one arm?” They both laughed and then Peter joined in, laughing and saying, “You never told me about him, you never told me about him!” at Helle repeatedly, as though he were happy to have missed out on the joke. And Lisa, tucking a strand of her blond hair behind her ear, said, “You’re terrible! Someone’s died. He’s dead. We shouldn’t laugh,” she said, laughing. Henrik remembered an article that had appeared recently in DN. A boy last winter had been beaten to death outside a club in Stockholm while a line of people waiting to get inside watched and did nothing. It was a different country than it used to be.

“What a terrible accident,” Lisa said, composing herself now, but still amused. She was clearing her throat and crossing and uncrossing her legs. Henrik was sure he saw Helle bite her lip and stifle a smile.

“I’m glad we didn’t see anything,” Helle said. “I’m happy we didn’t stop. I can’t stomach blood.”

“Neither can Henrik,” Lisa said. “You should have seen how he squirmed when I was bandaging his hand.” Peter laughed at this and Helle smiled at Henrik. He felt his hand very distinctly.

Later, after the dishes had been washed, and Lisa had put on a fresh pot of coffee, and Henrik had gone to his study for a bottle of brandy, it was quiet. Henrik sat on the couch facing the large bay window in the living room and watched the heavy rain boil the sea in the late-night dusk. He knew, of course, that by dwelling on the day’s coincidence, as awful as it may have been, he was being unfair to himself and to Lisa and to their guests. His mood had turned sour shortly after dinner and he hadn’t spoken more than half a sentence to Peter, who’d tried to engage Henrik earlier but now sat in front of the fireplace and tossed paper napkins into the flames. Henrik sipped his drink and took deep breaths and tried to enjoy the warmth of the house. But even Helle, her perfect body, the softness of her breasts in the thin sweater she’d put on when the rain started, appeared to him dirtied by Rolf Strand.

Lisa and Helle eventually found their way to the couch, where they sat close to each other and continued a conversation they’d been having about books. It disturbed Henrik, as he watched the two women, to see that Helle was able to feign such innocence. There she was, whispering animatedly about a novel she’d recently enjoyed and Lisa was nodding her head and saying that, yes, she’d enjoyed those very same qualities, and they were laughing. Henrik thought about the way Helle had that afternoon turned her head back toward him and whispered her approval as he entered her, and he felt something like rage building in his chest. Helle reached out and touched Lisa’s wrist with her fingertips and they both laughed again.

Henrik stood up and cleared his throat. “A man died today,” he said.

“Henrik, please,” Lisa said.

“A man died today,” he said, ignoring his wife. “We did nothing about it. We had the chance and we did nothing.”

“It was an awful coincidence,” said Peter, who stood up and put a hand on Henrik’s shoulder. “Don’t let it get to you.” Even at the office, Peter was eager to move on from whatever conflict might have been dragging on the day.

“We had no way of knowing,” Helle said.

Henrik concentrated on the warm reflection of the fireplace in the window. Before Rolf, he’d once seen a dead body covered by a thick gray blanket in the street next to the scene of a car accident. It was snowing then and there was blood in the snow and paramedics lingering about the body. An arm had slipped out from under the blanket and by the rings on the fingers Henrik could tell the body had belonged to a woman. Outside, the rain fell hard against the gutters. “Helle and I are sleeping together,” he said quietly.

“Henrik,” Lisa said.

“I told her I loved her, but I don’t think it’s true,” he said, turning now to face his wife.

Lisa got up from the couch and looked at Helle. “What’s he saying?”

“Henrik,” said Helle.

“I want to live in a place where someone will stop and help me if I’m dying on a dirt path.” He cleared his throat again as if he were going to speak further on the subject but did not.

“You’re drunk,” Lisa said. “You’re only drunk.”

“Probably,” he said. He sat back down and picked up his glass. “Probably,” he said, and took a drink.

Peter walked to the window and then back to the fireplace, where he sat down on the hearth and said, “I’m uncomfortable with all this.” Helle, who’d moved to one end of the couch, crossed and uncrossed her legs and pulled at the neck of her sweater. Lisa poured herself another drink from the bottle on the coffee table. During his military service, Henrik was stationed in Boden, where during the daylight of summer nights he often lay awake and worried about Lisa. He was sure she’d been playing a cruel joke when she told him she loved him in a letter. She was still at Uppsala then, studying psychology, and Henrik had at first thought she was conducting some kind of psychological experiment on him. It was a fragile time. He twice masturbated to the thought of one of his fellow soldiers. That autumn, he participated in a survival course taught by a middle-aged South African army officer who spoke terrible Swedish and once slapped Henrik over a misunderstanding. Henrik was taught a neck hold with which it was possible to make someone unconscious. He considered doing this if Peter were to try anything. He was trying to remember the second step of the neck hold when Helle suddenly stood up, straightened her sweater, and said, “That’s about it for me.” She then sat back down and looked at Peter. Henrik remembered the proper position for his arms and felt his shoulders move slightly as he visualized the movements. “You think this is funny?” Lisa asked him.

“I don’t know what it’s supposed to be,” said Henrik.

“The day started so well,” Peter said. He got up from the hearth, emptied his glass in a single gulp, and left the room. Helle followed not long after, and Henrik and Lisa sat in silence, listening to the restrained yelling in the guest room. Henrik listened for his name. This lasted until Lisa flinched as if she were completing some motion she began long ago. She stood in front of Henrik and was looking at him but, it seemed to Henrik, not really looking at him until she swallowed twice and then turned and walked away. She stumbled on the step between the living room and the hall and said, “Fuck you, Henrik,” into the darkness in front of her.

There was nothing to do but go.

Outside, the rain had stopped and the sky was clearing from the horizon inward, clouds peeling back across the rocky landscape. The water in the shallow inlet opposite the house gurgled. Rainwater ran down the driveway. Rolf’s sailing dinghy drummed hollowly off a smooth rock in the inlet. The net with Rolf’s beer was still attached, and would remain so until his son came in the late fall to take the boat out of the water for the winter. Henrik stood in the driveway and rested his bandaged hand on the wet roof of his car. The wind was blowing and thick drops of rainwater fell from the shaking trees all around him. He checked his watch. It was half past two. Already there was a wash of pink and orange on the horizon and the dark silhouette of a single, stubborn cloud.