The funeral was scheduled for two p.m. He had called to make sure of the time and he had several hours to go. Was he on the wrong track? Had he lost his mind? Was it all merely a delusion? Had his superiors truly shunned him? And why would Aida from Bijelina have anything to do with it?
Actually, he didn’t give a damn. All he was interested in was his own future. He wanted to know who his opponents were, what he was up against; he needed to identify his enemies. The dead Aida would help him do this.
He lit a cigarette. Took a few deep drags, felt his lungs fill and the nicotine go to his head.
Damn
– this was one cold country.
If everything went according to plan he would never have to come back here. He would leave this God-awful country as soon as he’d cleaned up his dirty laundry and hung it out to dry.
‘Thomas, you’re in the papers today!’
The social worker in charge of Aida Begovic’s case bounced out of her office, not quite pulling off a jogging gait. Her cheeks were red and her forehead was all shiny as she smiled sheepishly and enthusiastically waved the morning edition of
Kvällspressen.
Thomas forced himself to smile back at her.
‘I know,’ he said.
‘It’s all there, what you did . . .’
‘I know.’
He went into his office and closed the door firmly behind him, unable to face the attention. Sank down at his desk and covered his face with his hands. This morning it had been practically impossible to go to work. The budget had been approved by the city council, all the quarterly reports were done, he had pulled everything off in time. So now it was time to start all over again, for the eighth time: each year there were fewer resources and more expenditure, staff cutbacks, media coverage of the people hurt by the system, angry, upset, sad, resigned. More people were on sick leave for extended periods and less money was allocated for rehabilitation.
He sighed and sat up straight in his chair, his gaze locking on to Annika’s name in the paper. He had read the articles previously, but he hadn’t known that she had written them. Some other woman had called, a more seasoned reporter, Berit Hamrin. Why hadn’t Annika called?
Irritably he rejected the thought – he didn’t want her to call – and smoothed out the paper in front of him. It was an awful picture, his hair in his face like that making him look untidy. He read through the piece again, Annika’s piece: he recognized the facts that she had uncovered, she had told him everything, she had been honest.
There was a knock on the door. Instinctively, he folded up the paper and put it away in his top drawer.
‘May I come in?’
It was his boss. He swallowed.
‘Sure. Have a seat.’
The woman assessed him with her gaze as she sat down on the chair reserved for visitors, the chair that Annika had sat on. A twinge of insecurity ran up Thomas’s spine even though he had discussed the publication of these articles with his boss and reviewed what he should and should not divulge. She hadn’t read the articles herself, but there shouldn’t be anything she could find fault with.
‘I know you’ve had a rough time,’ his boss said, ‘but I want you to know that we really appreciate you here.’
She was friendly and serious and looked him in the eye. He glanced away, staring at a document on his desk.
‘I’m very pleased with your work. I know you’ve been going through a rough patch, and I hope things will pick up now that the budget is done. If you feel like you need someone to talk to, you can always come to me.’
He looked up, unable to conceal his surprise. This time his boss averted her gaze.
‘I just wanted you to know that,’ she said and got up.
Thomas got up too, mumbling some words of gratitude.
When the woman had closed the door behind her, he sank back down on his chair, dumbfounded.
What was that all about?
That very second the phone rang, making him jump.
‘Thomas Samuelsson?’
It was one of the directors of the Association of Local Authorities. Christ, what did they want? Automatically, he sat up straight in his chair.
‘I’m not sure if you remember me, but we met last year at the Social Services seminar on Långholmen.’
Thomas remembered the conference, all right, it had been heavy going and had lasted three days. But he couldn’t recall meeting this man at all.
‘Your name has come up several times since then and when we saw the article in the papers we realized that you’re the right man for the job.’
Thomas cleared his throat and made enquiring noises.
‘We’re looking for a project manager to investigate the discrepancies between the social welfare payments made in different districts. It wouldn’t have to be a full-time assignment, if you prefer to pursue these inquiries parttime it should take you about a year. Are you interested?’
Dumbstruck, Thomas closed his eyes and raked back his hair, completely overwhelmed. Work in the thick of things, investigate, manage a project, Jesus, this was exactly what he’d always dreamed of doing.
‘Yes, definitely,’ he managed to utter. ‘It sounds like an incredibly exciting and important project.’
He stopped: he was being too enthusiastic.
‘I’d be happy to discuss the baseline conditions,’ he continued in a calmer voice.
‘Excellent. Could you stop by on Thursday?’
After Thomas hung up, he stared at the phone for a full minute. The offer he had received caused his blood to course through his veins like a brook in the spring.
What an opportunity, what an assignment!
His smile came from a place down deep inside him. That explained why his boss had behaved so strangely – they must have called her first.
They had seen his name in the papers.
He pulled open the top drawer of his desk and took the paper out again, read her name and exhaled with a sigh.
He would forget her. Everything would get better. He just had to hang in there.
He had made the right decision.
Involuntarily, Annika gasped: the bluish gel was ice-cold when it hit her stomach. The woman in the white coat fiddled around with a probe and a cord. Wide-eyed, Annika watched her every move.
‘The gel promotes better imaging during the scan,’ the doctor said.
Annika lay on the green vinyl examination table. The woman sat down beside her, dipped the probe in the goo on Annika’s stomach and began to move it around. Annika gasped one more time –
damn, that was cold
– and the doctor rubbed the probe far down on her stomach, practically reaching the girl’s pubic hair. The edge of her panties was coated with blue goo. The doctor turned a knob on a metal box next to a small grey monitor and white streaks writhed like worms on the screen. Then she stopped.
‘There,’ the doctor said, pointing.
Annika hauled herself halfway up and looked at the screen. There was a tiny white ring in the upper right-hand corner.
‘That is your pregnancy,’ the woman said as she twisted the knob.
Annika looked at the spot suspiciously; it moved a little, writhed and swam around.
Her child. Thomas’s child. She swallowed.
‘I want to have an abortion,’ she said.
The gynaecologist removed the implement from Annika’s stomach and the image disappeared, the swimming bubble vanished. The nurse handed Annika a piece of rough green crêpe paper to wipe herself with.
‘I’d like to do a pelvic exam as well,’ the doctor said, handing the ultrasound implement to the nurse for cleaning. ‘Would you please go over to the chair with the stirrups?’
Her voice was friendly, efficient and indifferent. Annika froze.
‘Do I really have to have . . . an examination?’ she asked.
‘We’re already behind schedule,’ the nurse said in a low voice.
The doctor sighed.
‘Please sit up.’
Annika removed her jeans and her underwear and obediently arranged herself in the chair, that instrument of torture. The doctor positioned herself between her patient’s legs and pulled on a pair of gloves.
‘Could you inch down a bit? A little bit more. More. Now relax.’
Annika took a deep breath and closed her eyes as the doctor probed her insides with her fingers.
‘Relax, or the procedure will be painful.’
She squeezed her eyes shut while the doctor pressed on her stomach, one hand up her vagina – pain, nausea.
‘Your uterus is tilted,’ the gynaecologist said. ‘It’s unusual, but it shouldn’t cause you any trouble.’
As the doctor removed her hand, Annika heard a sucking sound and felt embarrassed.
‘There you go. You may get dressed now. Come to my office when you’re ready.’
The doctor tossed the gloves into a bucket and went quickly into the next room. In a state of confusion, Annika tried to get her knees back down from their position over her ears, feeling vulnerable and disgusting.
There was something gooey between her legs, but she didn’t dare ask for a tissue to wipe herself off with. She quickly pulled on her underwear and her jeans, the whole lower half of her belly feeling sticky, and then she followed the nurse into the next room.
‘You are seven weeks pregnant,’ the doctor said. ‘And you would like to have an abortion, you say?’
Annika nodded, swallowed, cleared her throat and sat down.
‘You are entitled to see a counsellor if you like. Would you like to see one?’
She shook her head; her hands felt too big and she hid them between her thighs.
‘Okay, I can give you an appointment for Friday, 7 December. Will that be all right?’
No
, she thought,
do it now. Now! Friday is three days away, it’s impossible, I can’t stand it. I can’t have this baby inside me three more days, I don’t want to feel its weight, the nausea, the swollen breasts, the life beating within me.
‘So, will the seventh do?’ the doctor asked again, peering over the rims of her glasses.
Annika nodded.
‘Be here by seven a.m. Don’t eat or drink after midnight the night before because we shall be administering a mild anaesthetic. The first step is to place a suppository by your cervix which will open the portio, and then we shall put you under. We shall perform what is known as a vacuum extraction, which involves dilating the cervical canal and suctioning out the contents of the womb. The procedure takes fifteen minutes and you can go home in the afternoon. We recommend that you abstain from sexual intercourse for two weeks after the procedure to avoid infection. Do you have any questions?’
Fifteen minutes, the contents are suctioned out.
‘No, no questions.’
‘Fine, then we’ll see you on Friday.’
Then Annika was back out in the long grey hallway again. She bumped into a young woman on her way to the examination room; they avoided each other’s gazes. She heard the doctor say hello. The seasickness returned, the nausea, the back pain – she had to get out of there.
The 48 bus swayed and swerved, and Annika almost threw up on the floor. She staggered off the bus at Kungsholmstorg and quickly made her way to her building. Standing in the courtyard, it took her a while to fight off the nausea before she could drag herself upstairs.
Her groceries were still in a bag by the door. She couldn’t muster up the strength to care and sank down on the couch and stared straight ahead.
A tiny bubble, a little white dot.
She knew it was a boy, a little blond boy, like Thomas. She closed her eyes, cried, tore out the cartoon section of the paper and used it to blow her nose. Once again, she opened the paper to the pages featuring the Paradise story and skimmed the last piece. According to the police, Rebecka was suspected of conspiracy to murder. She had threatened a client, Aida Begovic, who had been murdered at Sergelstorg the following day. The woman’s funeral would be at two p.m. today.
She let go of the paper, a sense of failure burning inside her, bent over, her stomach aching, the dot swimming, her heart racing faster and faster; everything was swirling, swirling. Berit’s voice echoed in her mind: ‘She didn’t have any relatives, no one has claimed the body, the funeral will be a simple ceremony over at Norra Begravningsplatsen . . .’
No one should have to be so utterly abandoned,
Annika thought.
Everyone deserves a final farewell.
She closed her eyes and sank back into the couch.
Three more days with the baby in her belly.
She looked at her watch.
If she left now she would make it to Aida’s funeral.
There were people inside the chapel.
Annika stopped in the doorway, suddenly insecure, and looked around. A few women and a young boy turned and looked at her.
At the other end of the chapel a small coffin was on display, shiny and white, topped with three red roses.
She swallowed, nauseated and shaky, took a few steps forward, took off her jacket and sat down on an empty pew at the back. Suddenly she became aware of her empty hands: she had forgotten to bring flowers.
The silence was massive, the light was spare. Ribbons of light came in through the stained-glass windows beneath the dome, painting colourful patches on the walls and floors. The sun lit up the walls, making the yellow paint glow.
A faint hum was heard. Discreetly, Annika tried to observe the other people attending the funeral. Most of them were women; half of them looked Swedish, and the other half looked like they came from Yugoslavia. In all, there were twelve to fourteen people there and all of them had flowers.
The surprise that Annika felt at first turned into annoyance.
Where were all of you when Aida needed help?
It’s damn easy being available once it’s too late.
The church bell began to toll above her. The sound trickled down into the nearly empty pews, sombre and ominous, and she felt each peal like a physical blow. Tears obscured her vision.
The tolling ceased, the subsequent silence reverberated. Then sobs and the clearing of throats were heard, along with the rustling of hymnals. Someone turned on a CD and Annika recognized the first movement of Mozart’s Requiem. Crying now in earnest, the music filled her, the slow stanzas created by the dying Wolfgang Amadeus.