Jensen Beach: Swallowed by the Cold: Stories

Because he couldn’t think of what else to do, Henrik circled his house in the dark. The light in the guest room was still on, its long rectangle of light falling on the deck. He watched Helle and Peter’s shadows pass in and out of this rectangle. He thought he’d probably never been so intensely discussed. Several of his tomatoes were ripe. He made his way around the house and peered into his own bedroom window, curious to see how his wife might be responding to all this. She was in bed and appeared to be asleep.

At the bunker, he checked the entrance in case he and Peter had somehow succeeded in unlocking the door without knowing it. The door was still tightly locked. His hand ached as if it were aware of being close to where he’d injured it.

He was careful on the slippery rocks. From the point of Bull’s Head, Henrik watched the horizon, but soon became bored and tired. The wind was blowing and the sea was loud. He was very tired. And he had to pee. The sun would rise soon and with it the noisy gulls and the fisherman from down around the point who took his old motorboat up every morning to check the fyke nets fastened to Bull’s Head. The eel population in the Baltic was diminishing, but still every year the fisherman set his nets. Helle and Peter were no doubt leaving that morning and Henrik couldn’t go home until that had happened. He would try to set things right with Lisa, possibly salvage some of the remaining two weeks of his vacation. Until then, he thought, as he urinated into the frothy Baltic, it was best to stay away.

He kneeled on the darkened porch, his bandaged hand stuck elbow-deep into a black opening underneath the top step, and reached for the spare key. Rolf had once told him it was there. The dirt was wet and he moved his fingers through it slowly, searching for the key.

It was cold inside Rolf Strand’s house. Henrik removed a thick wool sweater from a hook by the door and wrapped it around his shoulders. He poured himself a drink and looked around the house. It was larger than his house, but more crowded with furniture. There was a picture window on the eastern wall through which he planned to watch the sunrise.

There were dirty dishes in the sink, and the shell of an egg arranged neatly in a small pile on a plate on the table. Svenska Dagbladet was open to the sports section beside the plate. This permanence of things whose nature was temporary renewed his sadness, so he began tidying up. He placed the rest of the dishes in the sink and folded and placed the paper on top of the pile beside the fireplace. He swept a dried footprint out of the back door and straightened the pillows on the couch. He opened the door to each of the rooms and looked inside. There was a musty smell in many of them. He discovered a home office, and an exercise room in which an elliptical machine was positioned in front of a large television. In the back of the house, there was a bedroom with a small bed covered neatly by a floral bedspread. He checked in the closet. He tore clothes off their hangers, pulled boxes of photographs down from a shelf. He rifled through books from the bookcase in the living room, and got down on his hands and knees to inspect the far corners of a floor cabinet. He was looking for proof, he supposed, that Rolf deserved it.

In the kitchen, he poured another drink. Under the couch cushions, he found what amounted to nearly one hundred kronor in small coins. He left the cushions on the floor. There was a pornographic magazine in the magazine rack in the downstairs bathroom. It was French. Henrik thumbed through it but was not aroused. He returned to the kitchen and pulled one of the stools up to the counter. From this position it was possible for him to glimpse a small corner of his own driveway. Peter and Helle’s car was still parked beneath the narrow birch that later in the summer would partly obscure the front window of his house. He planned to sit and wait until the car was gone and then go home to his wife. There was nothing else to do. Whatever he had had with Helle was over, no question. She must have made this decision by now. His hand was bleeding and blood had seeped through the bandage. He ripped a paper towel from the roll beside the sink and stuffed it inside the bandage to absorb the blood. On the counter was the notepad on which Rolf had written Lennart’s telephone number. Henrik decided to call this number, and when a voice answered, he hesitated for only a moment.

From across the room Martin was trying to monitor his wife. They were at a fiftieth birthday party for Louise’s friend Pernilla, and it was getting late. He’d planned on taking Louise home before she could drink too much. But for the past hour he’d been talking with Pernilla’s son, whom he recognized from the Kino Club in Stockholm, and had lost track of Louise. Oskar made change for the video booths at the Kino Club. He was a nervous boy with long fingers that never stopped moving from his face to a button on his green shirt and back to his face. For several minutes, he’d been talking about the variety of modern coffin-building materials. He was standing very close to Martin, close enough to lean into him, which he did whenever he laughed. Martin watched Louise disappear into the kitchen empty-handed and later reappear in the living room with a fresh drink. She careened from conversation to conversation. Oskar kept talking. Martin was sure Oskar recognized him. Louise laughed loudly. She danced alone to the music. Oskar smelled good. He’d just finished a course at Uppsala, he told Martin, on the history of burial practices. “I’m mostly interested in the environmental impacts,” he said, leaning close to Martin and only catching himself with a pinch of his fingers on Martin’s sleeve. “Do you know they can make diamonds from the carbon of a cremated corpse?”

Louise staggered toward them from across the room. She was beginning to show signs. Her left eyelid drooped as if part of her brain were shutting down. Martin heard Oskar say, “Banana leaf eco-coffin,” and saw Louise’s eye begin to twitch and her head cock to the right. She was prone to compromised vision. Martin excused himself, took Louise by the elbow, and led her from the room.

Louise struggled to keep up. She said “excuse us, excuse us” as they walked down the empty hall. “Martin,” Louise said, “I was enjoying myself.”

“So was I,” he said.

Outside, the rain had cleared and the sky was pale. They walked slowly toward the car. Martin felt Louise’s weight against him. “Anyway,” she said, “it’s all very tragic, apparently. Totally heartbreaking.” She lost her balance, stumbled slightly. Martin had to hold her by the elbow to keep her standing. “These shoes,” she said.

“What’s heartbreaking, Louise?” Martin asked.

“Pernilla’s son was nearly finished with his boat when someone set fire to the whole marina,” Louise said and added, “for insurance money, Pernilla suspects.”

Martin had once owned a boat. It was a small catamaran, the sort of boat it was possible to launch from a beach. He enjoyed sailing the catamaran although it was light and unwieldy in the wind. When he and Louise married, he donated the boat to the sailing club in Årstaviken, where he’d taken lessons as a boy. “Did they salvage it?” he asked. They were far enough from the house that they couldn’t hear the hum of conversation or music from the open windows. The air was cool and the wind blew gently from the west. Martin felt it on his neck. It was July. He thought briefly of Oskar and what he might say to him the next time he saw him at the Kino Club.

“I didn’t catch the whole story,” Louise said. “But I guess Oskar, that’s the son’s name, had been working on the boat for two years. He was planning to sail it to Peru. Can you imagine?”