Elisabeth Rynell - To Mervas

It was when it was already too late and he’d fallen from his wheelchair and lay in a mess on the floor that I saw him looking at me — how his gaze burned, concise, relentless. That’s when I came to my senses. He wasn’t me, his eyes said, he was separate, his fate was his own. A wide gash in his head was bleeding and suddenly the whole apartment filled with his scream and I fell to the floor and slid my hands under his head and placed my cheek against his and I whispered I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but not a sound came from my lips and I could feel life leaving him, could feel how it stole away from him and was gone. I carefully removed my hands and sat up and prayed to the God that couldn’t possibly exist, prayed to him to let me die with the boy, to let it all end. I’ve broken the fundament of life, I’ve broken the covenant, so let me now die with the boy.

I’d cut him off, cut off his gaze upon the world, killed his gaze. Sebastian’s gaze. And his eyes weren’t mine, no, not even his pain or his disappointment was mine. There’s space between people, and it is necessary, it’s a boundary that must not be crossed, you have to stay behind it. There’s space between people, and it is necessary, it’s a boundary that must not be crossed, you have to stay behind it.

I must not say the words: I killed my boy whose name was Sebastian, I crushed his head the way Arnold crushed the head of the moose calf. Those words are unspeakable. How could I have told Lilldolly? Yet she’s the only one I’ve met whom I’d even considered telling.

“Be calm, my child,” begins a poem by –

It was evening, already late, when Kosti arrived. Marta was sitting at the table writing in her diary and he just stood there, in the doorway.

“Sorry for barging in,” he said, and his voice sounded large and deep in her ears.

She inhaled.

“I didn’t hear you. I didn’t hear you coming.”

Then they didn’t say a word.

“Shall we. . Shall we say hello?” Kosti asked.

Marta closed the diary and placed her palms on the tabletop to pull herself up. Inside, she was tumbling round and round.

“Are you in pain?” he asked.

“No, no, I was just surprised to see you, my legs. . I see that it’s you, I recognize you. .”

Suddenly, she felt his hands around her waist; he had helped her up, he held her, and she remembered what it was like to be touched, how incredible it felt. They now stood face-to-face, very close; she looked at his neck, the skin had become thin and wrinkled.

“Of course you recognized me,” he said amiably. “I recognized you too.”

“Yes, but that’s not what I meant. I recognized you from seeing you here in Mervas. You stood looking at me early one morning when I lay sleeping in the car.”

He didn’t respond and when she looked up at his face she thought he looked distressed.

“So you saw me even though you were asleep?” he asked, almost teasing.

Marta said nothing. She recognized him now, the way he was, the way he behaved.

“Shouldn’t we say hello?” Kosti said again. “I’ll start. Hi, Mart! Welcome to Mervas!”

“Hi, Kosti,” she whispered.

And they embraced, but not as hard and long as in her dream that first night, but more tentatively, anxiously; they didn’t quite know how to connect. Perhaps they were also embarrassed by all the years that had passed by and made them old. By everything they didn’t know about each other. They remained standing for a while with their hands hanging. Kosti stepped aside and took off his rubber boots and hung his green jacket on a crooked stick driven into the wall. Marta removed her diary from the table and tucked it into her bag under the bed.

“Have you seen Uncle Vanya?” she asked Kosti. “The version they showed on television a long time ago. .”

“Ah, you mean the one with that actress Lena Granhagen, and whoever else was in it. . No, I didn’t. You used to talk about it back then too. About that performance.”

He watched Marta, sort of surprised, and laughed.

“Well, I’ve been thinking about it,” she said in a slightly stiff monotone. “Don’t you think that all that’s happening now, that it’s a kind of afterward ? As if everything has already happened. That our meeting here is — a kind of afterward. In some way. I can’t explain it; you have to have seen the scene I’m thinking about.”

“But I don’t think that everything has already happened,” Kosti said. “I don’t even like that notion.”

“Are you married?”

He shook his head.

“Have you been married?”

He shook his head again.

“Why not?” she continued. “Why have you never married? Then you have no children either?”

Her voice, which had become hard and shrill, suddenly broke.

“Why the hell didn’t you get married and have children?” she sobbed. “Then it’s all nonsense! Then everything is completely meaningless!”

She tried to get past Kosti and get out of the cabin, but he blocked her way and caught her.

“What are you doing, Mart? Stay here, come on, look at me.”

His grip was fierce, she thought. He was stronger than she was. But she looked down and averted her face, it was contorted with tears that would not spill and she didn’t want him to see it.

“I’ve got to get out,” she whimpered, and tried to wriggle loose.

“Pull yourself together. You can at least look at me!”

She turned her face toward his but kept her gaze down.

“It’s too much. All this is too much.”

He moved his head so he could meet her eyes from below.

“Yes, it is, and that’s exactly why we have to talk and look at each other,” he said. “Not throw words around as if we were splashing water and then running away. Right?”

She took a deep breath and looked at him. “I guess you’re right,” she said quietly. “But I’m not used to it. .”

He laughed.

“No, it’s not easy for me either, to see you after almost twenty-five years. I mean, it’s not easy for either of us.”

The grasp around her upper arms had loosened, but she couldn’t see anything, there was a storm in the darkness, a storm raging through the dark city, she could hear its sounds: sheet metal, glass, wind through the shaft.

“Are you hungry?” she asked with a great distance in her voice, as if she were someone else.

“Yes, finally! Yes, I’ll take out something for us to eat. Let’s set the table and make it nice here. I’ve got a bottle somewhere too. For God’s sake, Marta, calm down a little, will you? We’re not strangers. We’ve come here to see each other wholly of our own free will. Why don’t we try to be a little happy, a little lighthearted?”

She looked at him, at his face, which made her feel at home. A deep feeling inside, she thought, and now she was smiling too, she noticed how the smile tore at her face, how it was pulling it to pieces. She lifted her hand and carefully stroked his cheek.

“You’ve grown a beard,” she said.

“Yes, that’s what happens when you don’t shave.”

He let his fingers lightly brush against her face.

“And you have wrinkles,” he smiled. “Tiny, fine wrinkles.”

It felt as if the touch gave her a face, as if he were drawing it with his fingertips.

“I found your pipe cleaner,” she heard herself say. “Over by the school. I’ve got it in the glove compartment. That’s when I knew you were here; it was before I found the cabin.”

“And my letter? You haven’t thanked me for the letter!”

“Yes, it made me happy. But these things are difficult. Difficult for me. You know, I’ve been so lonely. I don’t know exactly what life has done to me.”