Mai stayed in the background and watched. It was, Johan thought, as if she were intent on taking it all in now so she could describe it in detail at some later date.
Why had father and son not spoken to each other in eight years? The reason was unclear. Andreas had once asked if he could borrow Johan and Mai’s cottage in Värmland. Johan explained that it wasn’t convenient, and Andreas seemed to understand. Some weeks later they had dinner together, and everything between them was fine. The business about the cottage was barely mentioned, and they had an exceptionally pleasant time. That evening Johan even told Mai that he would like to spend more time with his son. One month later, Johan received a letter from Andreas. In the letter Andreas made it quite clear that he despised his father as much as his father had always despised him. The fact that his father would not even allow him to borrow his cottage was simply the last straw.
Johan shook his head. The letter wounded him deeply, but he didn’t know what to make of it. They had had a leak at the cottage, and they’d been doing a bit of redecorating. He had explained all that to Andreas, not that he’d owed him any explanation. His son was a grown man. He couldn’t just assume that he could borrow the cottage whenever he liked and do heaven knows what with heaven knows whom in Johan and Mai’s most private retreat, among their most personal possessions. But really: a leak. Surely even his son could understand that.
Several days after he received the letter, Johan asked Mai to call Andreas. She was better at sorting out matters like this, he thought.
His son said to Mai, “Doesn’t my father realize that I want nothing more to do with him? As far as I’m concerned, he no longer exists.”
But now here he was, eight years later. As spindly as his father, but with his mother’s face. And with a girlfriend on the verge—any minute now—of giving birth. Johan wanted to ask Ellen whether she had ever read Marcel Bavian’s short stories. But he restrained himself and tried to smile, even though it was a painful effort. It wasn’t the hypocrisy that hurt so much, it was the physical action itself. Lips, cheeks, eyes, so many parts of his face had to be moved in order to conjure up a reasonably convincing smile. And his head. The pressure that never let up was only exacerbated by their presence. When he probed deeper, the pressure turned into a chant, a string of one-syllable words:
get-out-of-here-it’s-no-use-I-can’t-take-this-I-want-you-all-out-of-here-get-out-get-out-now.
“Well, here we are, then,” said Andreas. “How’re you doing, Pappa?”
“Oh, up and down, you know,” Johan replied, struggling to keep his hard-won smile in place. It was threatening to crumble, crack, and gape open, like the boil on his cheek. All sorts of stuff was sure to be oozing out of him soon. He fumbled discreetly with the morphine pump. Everybody saw it, but nothing was said.
“Eight years,” Johan said.
“Yes,” said Andreas.
The two women, Mai and Ellen, sat quietly listening.
“Eight years,” Johan said again.
“But now you’re sick,” his son responded candidly, “and that changes everything.”
Johan wanted to ask exactly what had changed. If his son had come here to forgive him, he might as well not have bothered. Reconciliation, Mai had said, not forgiveness. Johan had done nothing that needed forgiving. He turned to Andreas.
“We’d had a leak!”
His son stared at him blankly. “What?”
“We’d had a leak.”
“I’m not following you. . . .”
“The cottage. You wanted to borrow it, and I said no because we’d had a leak—the pipes in the bathroom. Flooding. So we had to do some redecorating.”
Andreas looked at the floor. “I see.”
Johan looked at his son. Wasn’t this what he wanted? Wasn’t this enough? He was Alice all over again, holding a grudge for years. Refusing to relent.
“You might have told me,” Andreas muttered.
“Told you what?”
“About the leak.”
Johan shut his eyes. Was this what it was like to die? He opened his eyes again and looked at Mai. Was this what she called reconciliation, this pathetic exchange between a spindly man in his forties and an even spindlier man of seventy? All this banal chatter about a leak at the cottage, all this lousy, rotten pettiness? Johan’s eyes moved to Andreas. What was it about his son that made you feel like punching him in the jaw? It was a familiar impulse. Always there, ever since Andreas was a helpless, amoebic child with trembling hands who never dared do anything and was conceited to boot. His classmates had called him Bighead because even though he was a coward he was always boasting and lying. “Some children are simply harder to love than others,” Alice used to say. “We’ll just have to try harder. He
is
our little bird.”
Johan cleared his throat, summoned up the last of his strength, and reached a hand out to his son. He was, after all, no one else’s little bird.
“Andreas,” he said, “come sit beside me.” His son sat down. Johan stroked his hair. “Can you forgive me?”
“For what? The thing about the cottage?”
“Yes, that too. But for not being the kind of father you needed. Can you forgive me for that?”
Andreas turned to Ellen with a question in his eyes. She nodded to him. Andreas took a deep breath and turned back to Johan.
“There’s no need. I . . . you don’t understand . . . I just wanted . . .” As always, Andreas broke off in mid-sentence, but this time it was in order to lay his head on his father’s shoulder, sigh, and dissolve into tears.
As they were about to leave, when they were standing in the doorway saying goodbye, Ellen suddenly had a thought. She rummaged through her purse and pulled out a camera.
“I almost forgot the most important thing!” she exclaimed.
Andreas was ordered to take up his position by the bedside again. He was asked to sit down and take Johan’s hand. Mai was to stand behind, like a ministering angel in the background of a painting. Ellen peered at them through the lens and assured them it looked great, especially with the silvery afternoon light filtering through the window. “There!” she cried blithely. “Captured for posterity!”
“Ellen,” Johan said, “do you think you could send me a copy once it’s developed?”
Ellen nodded, her eyes flickering to Mai. “Shall I send it here or to your home address or what?”
Mai was about to answer, but Johan beat her to it. “Send it to me here at the hospital. That way I can look at it at night before I go to sleep.”
Ellen nodded again but pointed to her stomach. “It might be a while—I doubt I’ll manage to get the pictures developed before the baby comes. I could go into labor any time now, but I have to be two weeks overdue before they’ll even think of inducing me.” She gabbled on. “So I don’t know exactly when I’ll have a chance to send it.”
“Whenever you can, my dear,” said Johan. “Whenever you can. And don’t forget to send me a picture of the baby too.”
Ellen looked at Andreas, smiled, and nodded emphatically.
“I’d like a picture of the moment the baby . . .” Johan cleared his throat. “I’d like a picture of the moment your baby turns to you and touches you for the first time. Could you send me a picture like that, Ellen?”
She nodded again, though she must already have been envisaging the difficulties of taking precisely such a picture.
“Ellen,” Johan said.
The pregnant girl looked at him.
He nodded at his son, still holding Ellen’s blue eyes with his own.
“Stay with him!” he said.
“Oh, yes!” she said, squeezing his son’s hand. “You bet I will.”
The days that followed found him screaming in pain. But his screams cannot have been very loud, since no one heard them. His head felt close to exploding. He remembered something Mai had once told him about Schumann. As the darkness invaded his mind, he heard a constant
A
note. This was before he came to be haunted by the uncannily beautiful music that he could neither write down nor play. Night and day that
A,
that constant
A.
It was the same with Johan: a humming sound in his head just kept swelling and swelling. He had no ear for music. He could have mistaken it for a dial tone, and the dial tone was high
A;
everybody knew that.
A
for
amor, A
for
arsenic, A
for
aspect, A
for
apple, A
for
angst, A
for
abracadabra, A
for
ashes. A
for
Mai
!
“Did you call me?” Her voice came from far away.
“Can’t you do something?” he pleaded.
“I’m holding your hand. Can you feel it?”
“But can’t you do something, Mai?”
Moments of confusion. Babble. Words all jumbled up. Backward and forward.
Hey, ho! Sing, sing, sing!
Mai’s tears. A whisper, a long way off, addressed not to him but to someone else: “He doesn’t know what he’s saying anymore.”
And moments of clarity. Standing in front of the mirror that day in Värmland.
This is my life. This is my . . . life. And in his mind’s eye all he could see was a long straight line, like Mai’s braid. Was that all there was? Dearest Mai, was that all there was? Not one little curve?
This set him thinking. He wanted a curve. It grows light in the morning, and dark in the evening, and in the course of the day he turns and looks up at the sky or down the road. It makes no difference. But he turns. There is a curve. To turn is to make a curve. An exquisite, consummate movement.
It grows light in the morning and dark in the evening, and in the course of the day he turns.
There.
Now he could sleep. That was what he meant. All he had to do was turn, and then he could sleep.
“Johan.”
Mai was standing over him.
“Johan.”
He opened his eyes and looked up at her. She was smiling.
“Did I wake you?”
He shook his head.
“Ellen and Andreas have a daughter. Seven pounds ten ounces. Delivered by cesarean section this morning at five past seven. Mother and baby are both doing well. They’re going to call her Agnes.”
“After my mother,” he breathed.
“Yes.”
“Good,” he whispered, and drifted back to sleep.
More days of babble. Again he hears her speaking to one of the white coats. “He doesn’t know what’s going on. He’s miles away now.” Again he hears her weep, and the white coats comfort her. He wants to shout, “No! I’m not miles away. I’m here!” But it hurts and he can’t do it. Other sounds escape from his lips.
One night she comes to him. It must be night, because he hasn’t heard a sound for hours. She sits down on his bed.
“Johan,” she says.
“Yes, Mai.”
“Johan,” she says, again.
It occurs to him that maybe she can’t hear him, so he opens his eyes and looks at her.
“It’s time . . . isn’t it?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I’m lying here waiting for it to grow light. Listen: It grows light in the morning and dark in the evening, and in the course of the day I turn. It’s as simple as that.” He tries to laugh. “It’s a sort of mantra. It doesn’t mean anything, but if you say it over and over again it helps.”
She is not listening. “I think it’s time, Johan.” This time she isn’t asking.
“But I just told you . . . you’re not listening.”
“I know you better than anybody else,” she goes on.
“I don’t know about that,” he says.
“And we have a language all our own, you and I.”
Now look who’s babbling, he thinks to himself. A language all our own! Have you ever heard such a thing? Oh, no, Mai.
Maj from Malö.
We don’t have any language all our own, you and I.
“Another language,” she says.
He stares at her.
“And it’s time.”
“No,” he says. But she doesn’t hear. “No,” he says again. “Don’t, Mai! Not yet! Please! Wait till it grows light.”
“I love you,” she whispers. Then she takes his hand in hers, moistens his upper arm with a wad of cotton, and injects him with the barbiturate. She sees that he is sleeping and that he is in no pain, that it is good. So she gives him the lethal injection. She watches and waits. So quick and yet so imperceptible. No change in his expression. A trickle of blood from the boil, and that is all. She clasps her hands and says a prayer, not because she’s particularly religious, or because Johan was, but because somehow it seems the right thing to do.
She leaves the room, shutting the door behind her, and pulls something from her purse. It is her cell phone. She calls Dr. Emma Meyer at home. This is not the sort of conversation one begins by apologizing for calling so late and waking the whole house, though it
is
late. It is no longer night. Soon it will be light, and Dr. Meyer listens to what Mai has to say: that she’s prepared to give herself up to the police. That she’s prepared to stand trial. That she has followed her conscience. She made a promise and she has kept it.
Dr. Meyer says, “He was going to die soon anyway.”
Mai starts to cry.
“I won’t tell anyone about this, Mai, not if you don’t.”
Mai’s voice, surprised, faint: “You won’t?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Dr. Meyer is silent. Then she says, “Because you respected Johan’s wishes. You knew him; I didn’t. Nor did any of those people who would feel justified in judging you if this were to get out.”
Mai has no answer to this.
Dr. Meyer says, “Wait right there, Mai. I’m on my way. We’ll have some coffee and a sandwich. After that you’re going home to get some sleep. And then, a few hours from now, the day can begin.”
Mai nods, the way small children nod when they are talking on the telephone, heedless that the person they are talking to cannot see them.
Dr. Meyer’s voice again: “Did you hear what I said?”
“Yes.”
“Not a word, Mai. There’s no point trying to explain. . . .”
“No.”
“Are we agreed?”
“Yes.”
After her conversation with the doctor, Mai goes back to Johan and sits down on his bed. The door stands open, a band of light streaming into the room from the corridor. He looks just the same. No change yet. She takes his hand to kiss it, but it is cold and she drops it.