Surprised, Thomas laughed.
‘What an amazing bullet train of thought. How on earth did you figure all that out?’
‘I wonder what they look like,’ she said. ‘Imagine the day when we get to meet them! It’ll be great. Just think of all the new foods we’ll get to try. I’m so sick of carrots and potatoes. Lots of new vegetables. Spices. There ought to be zillions of new worlds out there, and I’m fed up with this one.’
Annika grew silent, no longer laughing.
‘Why is that?’ Thomas asked.
Now serious, she looked him in the eye.
‘Why do
you
feel that way?’ She queried, picking up on his earlier complaint.
He sighed quietly and polished off the wine in his glass, feeling a bit drunker than he should have.
‘I don’t like my life any more,’ he said.
For some reason it felt so easy to tell her everything: he knew that she would understand, that she wouldn’t judge him. He looked at her; she was tired, a little too thin, and her capable hands were folded in her lap.
‘I love my wife,’ Thomas said. ‘We have a nice house, we’re well off, we have lots of friends, I work in a field of my own choosing that I enjoy, but still . . .’
He grew silent, hesitated, sighed, fingered his tie, pulled it off, folded it up and put it down on the couch.
‘We want different things,’ he said. ‘She wants to focus on her career at the bank, a top management position. She figures she’d better hurry up, she’ll be forty this spring.’
They sat in silence for a while.
‘So, how did you meet?’ Annika asked.
Thomas sighed, smiled, and, infuriatingly, tears came to his eyes.
‘She was the sister of one of the guys on the hockey team, much older than her brother. Sometimes she would give us a ride to practice and to games. Good-looking. Cool. Had a driver’s licence.’
In an attempt to hold his sentimental feelings in check, he laughed.
‘Your secret fantasy woman?’ Annika asked and he blushed a little.
‘You could say that. I would think about her at times right before I fell asleep. Once, when I was spending the night at my friend Jerker’s house, I saw her leave the bathroom in only her bra and panties. She was magnificent. I jerked off like a madman that night.’
They laughed together.
‘How did you hook up?’
Thomas looked into his empty wineglass, thinking that he really shouldn’t have any more while simultaneously pouring what was left in the carton into his glass.
‘The summer I turned seventeen a whole bunch of us guys were going to travel on an Interrail pass through Europe. Everybody was supposed to arrange some kind of summer job and earn some money and we would leave in mid-July. I guess I should have known what would happen . . .’
Annika smiled. ‘No summer jobs.’
‘Except for me, of course,’ Thomas said. ‘My parents own the ICA grocery store in Vaxholm, so there was no escape for me – I worked in the deli section. In addition to that I worked weekends and on holidays, so I had a lot of money by July.’
‘But no travelling companions,’ Annika added.
‘And my mother wouldn’t let me go all by myself,’ Thomas said. ‘I was desperate, slamming doors and refusing to talk either to my parents or my friends. The world was rotten. But then this miracle occurred.’
Thomas picked up his tie and unfolded it.
‘Eleonor’s boyfriend, an awful upper-class twit, broke up with her right before they were going to take a trip to Greece together. Eleonor tore up the tickets and threw them in his face. She decided to see Europe by Interrail, something her ex-boyfriend would never condescend to doing, only she didn’t want to go alone.’
Annika put his tie on and saluted him.
‘So you became her male escort.’
He yanked on the tie, Annika pretended to be throttled by it and they laughed. They sat in silence for a while and she took the impromptu noose off.
‘What happened?’
Thomas drank some wine.
‘Eleonor wasn’t very friendly at first. ‘We can stick together as far as Greece, then we’ll see’ was what she told me. We got on the wrong train in Munich and ended up in Rome, and it was boiling hot, forty degrees Celsius, by the time we got there. While I went off to buy water, a gang of juvenile delinquents robbed Eleonor. By the time I got back she was incensed with me, Italy, and absolutely everything. I was ashamed that I hadn’t been able to protect her. We found a filthy room, which I paid for, near the station, and got blind drunk. We staggered through the streets, each clutching one of those straw-covered bottles of Chianti. Eleonor yowled her head off and made a spectacle of herself, draping herself all over strangers, and all over me. I tried to drape myself over her as much as I could. Things were okay until we reached the Piazza Navona. Then Eleonor decided she was going to take a dip in the fountain there, just like Anita Ekberg.
‘Wrong fountain, though,’ Annika said.
Thomas nodded.
‘And the timing was all wrong too. Seven thousand drunk soccer fans were at the piazza, and when Eleonor’s T-shirt got wet, you could see right through it. They literally tried to tear her clothes off – she nearly got raped then and there in the fountain.’
Annika smiled and saluted him again.
‘But you saved her.’
‘I hollered like the chef in Disney’s
Lady and the Tramp
: ‘Sacramento idioto, I’m a-going to punch-a you on the nose!’ Then I pulled her out of the fountain and dragged her back to the hotel.’
‘And you went to bed?’
‘Unfortunately, no,’ Thomas replied. ‘Eleonor threw up all night. The next day she was green at the gills. We spent the morning at the police station reporting the robbery and then we spent the afternoon at the Swedish Embassy arranging for an emergency passport. That night we went over to the Al, planning to hitch a ride north and go home. We stood there by the road for ever in the awful heat and almost died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Finally this short tubby guy in a red car picked us up. He was as hung-over as Eleonor and didn’t speak a word of any familiar language. He turned in at the first Area Servizio we passed, waved at us to indicate that we should follow him and marched up to the bar. He ordered three glasses of something red and viscous, exclaimed and knocked one glass back. After he’d banged the empty glass on the counter, he looked at us commandingly, waving his hands and saying ‘
Prego, prego!
’
‘We were scared to death that he would ditch us if we didn’t obey, so we downed the disgusting stuff and got back into the car. The same thing happened at every Area Servizio. Three glasses, hup, bang the counter. Soon we were singing as we rode along. It got very dark. Late at night we reached this fabulous town, at the top of a very high mountain. Perugia, the man said and arranged for us to stay with a friend of his, the town baker. They gave us this room with sloping ceilings above the shop, it had rose-patterned wallpaper. We made love. It was the first time for me.’
Thomas grew silent, the memories fluttering around the room like sighs. Annika swallowed and felt simultaneously close and distant, experiencing a sensation of loss and pain.
‘Last spring we toured the wine country of Tuscany,’ he said. ‘One day we took off and went to Umbria. Coming back to Perugia was very strange, the place had always represented something special to us. It was where we had become a couple. We’ve never been apart for a single day since then.’
Once again, Thomas grew quiet.
‘What happened?’ Annika said.
‘We didn’t recognize a thing. Our Perugia was a quiet medieval town with stone buildings, like a painted backdrop on a mountain top. The real Perugia was a generous, vital and bustling city with a university. I was fascinated: Perugia was like our relationship, something that had started out as a teenage fantasy and had developed into a generous, vital and intellectual partnership. I wanted to stay on, but Eleonor was appalled. She felt hoodwinked. She didn’t find a dynamic marriage in what Perugia had become – she’d lost her dream.’
They sat in silence for awhile.
‘Why didn’t you recognize a thing?’
Thomas sighed.
‘Probably because we’d never been there before. The man in the car was so drunk that he could have been mistaken, or maybe we’d misunderstood him. We could have been in any Umbrian town: Assisi, Terni, Spoleto . . .’
Annika saw Thomas struggle with his memories, bent over, elbows resting on his knees, the wild shiny hair stiff with blood, and had to suppress an impulse to brush it to one side. What an attractive man he was.
‘Are you hungry?’ she asked.
He looked at her, confused for a second.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘I make a mean pasta with canned sauce,’ she said. ‘Would that be all right?’
He nodded in agreement, of course.
Annika went out to the kitchen and glanced out the window. Someone was taking a dump in the fancy guest apartment. She took out a box of tagliatelle and a can of Italian-style tomato sauce and brought a pot of water to the boil. Thomas stood in the doorway, leaning against the doorpost.
‘Still a bit woozy?’ she asked.
‘I think it’s the wine,’ he said. ‘What a great kitchen – you’ve got a gas range.’
‘The 1935 model,’ she said.
‘Where’s the bathroom?’
‘Go down half a flight. Put on some shoes, the floor is filthy.’
Annika set the table, considered using napkins, stopped and analysed that notion. Napkins? When did she ever use napkins? Why should she start now? To impress someone, to put on an act?
When Thomas returned, she was in the process of draining the pasta. She heard him take his shoes off and clear his throat. As he walked into the kitchen she noticed that he now had a little colour in his cheeks.
‘Interesting toilet arrangement,’ he said. ‘How long did you say you’ve lived here?’
‘Two years. And then some. Would you like a napkin?’
He sat down at the table.
‘Yes, please,’ he said.
Annika handed him a bright yellow paper napkin, reminiscent of Easter. Thomas unfolded it and put it in his lap, it was the natural thing to do. She left hers folded beside her plate.
‘Good pasta,’ he said.
‘You don’t have to say anything,’ she replied.
They finished their meal, hungry and silent. At times they glanced at each other and smiled. Their knees kept bumping up against each other under the tiny kitchen table.
‘I’ll do the dishes,’ Thomas offered.
‘There’s no hot water,’ Annika said. ‘I’ll do them later.’
They left the dishes and went back into the living room, a new kind of silence between them, a buzzing sensation in Annika’s midriff. They came to a standstill on either side of the coffee table.
‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘Have you ever been married?’
She sank down on the couch.
‘Engaged,’ she replied.
He sat down next to her, the distance between them charged.
‘Why did it end?’ he asked in an interested and friendly voice.
Trying to smile, Annika took a deep breath. The question was so friendly, so normal.
Why did it end?
She tried to find the words.
‘Because . . .’
She cleared her throat and fingered the table top. A normal question deserved a normal response.
‘Was it so bad? Did he leave you?’
Thomas’s voice was so friendly, so full of compassion. A dam burst inside her: tears started rolling down her face, she doubled over and flung her hands over her head, she couldn’t help herself. She felt his surprise, sensed how uneasy and awkward he felt, but she couldn’t do anything about it.
He’s going to leave
, Annika thought,
get up and go and never come back again, and that’s just as well.
‘Hey, what’s wrong?’ he said.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to . . .’ she sobbed.
Thomas patted her softly on the back and stroked her hair a few times.
‘Listen, Annika, tell me what’s wrong.’
She tried to calm down and get her breathing back to normal, mucus dripping on her knees.
‘I can’t tell you,’ she said. ‘I just can’t.’
He grasped her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. Instinctively, she turned her tear-swollen face away.
‘I look awful,’ she mumbled.
‘What happened to your fiancé?’
Annika refused to look up.
‘I can’t tell you,’ she said. ‘You’ll hate me.’
‘Hate you? Why?’
She looked up at him, knowing that her nose was red and her eyelashes were clumped together. Thomas’s face was concerned, worried, his eyes were a sparkling blue. He cared. He really wanted to know. She looked down again, breathing open-mouthed and rapidly, hesitating, hesitating, then taking the plunge.
‘I killed him,’ Annika whispered to the floor.
The silence mushroomed and grew heavy. Thomas tensed up beside her.
‘Why?’ he asked in a low voice.
‘He beat me. Nearly strangled me. I had to leave him, or I would’ve died. When I broke up with him, he took a knife and gutted my cat. He was about to
kill
me. I hit him and he fell down into an old blast-furnace . . .’
She stared fixedly at the floor, feeling the distance between them.
‘And he died?’
Thomas’s voice was different now, muffled.
Annika nodded, tears spilling from her eyes again.
‘If you only knew how horrible it’s been,’ she said. ‘If I could change anything in my whole life, it would be that day, that blow.’
‘Did you stand trial?’
Distant? Remote?
Another nod.
‘I was convicted of manslaughter and was sentenced to probation. I had to see a therapist for an entire year because my parole officer thought I needed therapy. Actually, it was pretty worthless. My therapist was a head case. I haven’t felt very well since it happened.’
Annika stopped talking, closed her eyes and waited for Thomas to get up and leave. He did. She buried her face in her hands and waited for the sound of the front door. A bottomless pit opened wide, monumental despair, emptiness and loneliness,
dear God, please help me . . .
Instead she felt his hand smooth over her hair.