Handling the Undead Read online

  ‘Come back,’ he whispered. ‘Magnus. How am I supposed to tell Magnus? He’s turning nine next week, you know. He wants pancake cake. How do you make pancake cake, Eva? You were the one who was going to make it, you bought the raspberries and everything. They’re already at home in the freezer, how am I supposed to go home and open the freezer and there are the raspberries that you bought to make pancake cake and how am I supposed to…’

  David screamed. One long sound until all the air was gone from his lungs. He pressed his lips against her knuckles, mumbled, ‘Everything’s over. You don’t exist any more. I don’t exist. Nothing exists.’

  The pain in his head reached an intensity that he was forced to acknowledge. A bolt of hope shot through him: he was dying. Yes. He was going to die too. There was crackling, something breaking in his brain as the pain swelled and swelled and he had just managed to think, with complete certainty—I’m dying. I am dying now. Thank you—when it stopped. Everything stopped. Alarms and sirens stopped. The lighting in the room dimmed. He could hear his own rapid breathing. Eva’s hand was moist with his own sweat, it slid across his forehead. The headache was gone. Absently, he rubbed her hand up and down across his skin, drawing her wedding band across it, wanting the pain back. Now that it was gone, the ache in his chest welled up in its place.

  He stared down at the floor. He did not see the white caterpillar that came in through the ceiling, fell, and landed on the yellow institutional blanket draped over Eva, digging its way in.

  ‘My darling,’ he whispered and squeezed her hand. ‘Nothing was going to come between us, don’t you remember?’

  Her hand jerked, squeezed back.

  David did not scream, did not make a move. He simply stared at her hand, pressed it. Her hand pressed back. His chin fell, his tongue moved to lick his lips. Joy was not the word for what he felt, it was more like the disorientation in the seconds after you wake from a nightmare, and at first his legs did not want to obey him when he pulled himself up so he could look at her.

  They had cleaned and prepped her as best they could, but half of her face was a gaping wound. The elk, he supposed. It must have had time to turn its head, or make a final desperate attempt to attack the car. Its head, its antlers had been the first thing through the windshield and one of the points had struck her face before she was crushed under the weight of the beast.

  ‘Eva! Can you hear me?’

  No reaction. David pulled his hands across his face, his heart was beating wildly.

  It was a spasm…She can’t be alive. Look at her.

  A large bandage covered the right half of her face, but it was clear that it was…too small. That bones, skin and flesh were missing underneath. They had said that she was in bad shape, but only now did he realise the extent of it.

  ‘Eva? It’s me.’

  This time there was no spasm. Her arm jerked, hitting against his legs. She sat up without warning. David instinctively backed up. The blanket slid off her, there was a quiet clinking and…no, he had not realised the full extent of it at all.

  Her upper body was naked, the clothes had been cut away. The right side of her chest was a gaping hole bordered by ragged skin and clotted blood. From it came a metallic clanking. For a moment, David could not see Eva, he only saw a monster and wanted to run away. But his legs would not carry him and after several seconds he came to his senses. He stepped up next to the bed again.

  Now he saw what was making the sound. Clamps. A number of metal clamps suspended from broken veins inside her chest cavity. They swayed and hit against each other as she moved. He swallowed dryly. ‘Eva?’

  She turned her head toward the sound of his voice and opened her one eye.

  Then he screamed.

  Vällingby 17.32

  Mahler made his way slowly across the square, his shirt sticky with sweat. He had a bag of groceries for his daughter in one hand. Soot-grey pigeons waddled under his feet with centimetres to spare.

  He looked like a large, grey dove himself. He’d bought the worn suit jacket fifteen years earlier, when he became fat and could no longer use his old clothes. Same thing with the pants. Of his hair, only a wreath above the ears was left and the bald spot on top had become red and freckled from the sun. It was easy to imagine that Mahler was carrying empty bottles in the bag, that he was rooting around in garbage bins—a big pigeon plucking goodies from discarded takeaways.

  This was not the case. But it was the impression he gave: a loser.

  In the shadow of Åhléns Emporium, on his way down to Ångermannagatan, Mahler dug under his double chins with his free hand and took hold of the necklace. A present from Elias. Sixty-seven colourful plastic beads threaded on a fishing line, now tied around his neck for all eternity.

  While he continued to walk he rubbed the beads one by one like a rosary, like prayers.

  It was three flights up to his daughter’s apartment; he had to stop and catch his breath for a while. Then he unlocked the door with his own key. Inside it was dark, stuffy and stale from unaired heat.

  ‘Hi sweetheart. It’s just me.’

  No answer. As usual he feared the worst.

  But Anna was there, and still alive. She lay curled up on Elias’ bed, on the designer sheets that Mahler had bought, her face turned to the wall. Mahler put down the shopping bag, stepped over the dusty Lego pieces and perched himself gingerly on one corner of the bed.

  ‘How’s it going, little one?’

  Anna drew in air through her nose. Her voice was weak.

  ‘Daddy…I can feel his smell. It’s still there in the sheets. His smell is still here.’

  Mahler would have liked to lie down on the bed, against her back. Put his arms around her and been Daddy, and made everything hurtful go away. But he didn’t dare to. The bed slats would crack under his weight. So he simply sat there, looking at the Lego pieces that no one had built anything with for two months.

  When he had been looking for an apartment for Anna, there was one on the ground floor of this same building. He hadn’t taken that one, out of fear of burglars.

  ‘Come and have something to eat.’

  Mahler put out two servings of roast beef and potato salad from plastic containers, cut up a tomato and placed the slices on the edge of the plates. Anna did not answer.

  The blinds in the kitchen were drawn, but the sun pressed in through the cracks, drawing glowing lines across the kitchen table and illuminating the whirling motes. He should clean. Lacked the energy.

  Two months ago, the table had been full of things: fruit, mail, a toy, a flower picked during a walk, something Elias had made at daycare. The stuff of life.

  Now there was just the two plates of supermarket food. The heat and the smell of dust. The bright red tomatoes; a pathetic attempt.

  He went to Elias’ room, stopped in the doorway.

  ‘Anna…you need to eat a little. Come on. It’s ready.’

  Anna shook her head, said into the wall, ‘I’ll eat it later. Thanks.’

  ‘Can’t you get up for a while?’

  When she didn’t answer, he went out into the kitchen again and sat down at the table. Started loading the food into his mouth automatically. Thought the sound of his chewing echoed between the quiet walls. Finally he ate the tomato slices. One by one.

  A ladybug had landed on the balcony railing.

  Anna had been busy packing. They were going to Mahler’s summer house in Roslagen, staying a couple of weeks.

  ‘Mummy, a ladybug…look.’

  She had come out into the living room in time to see Elias standing on the outdoor table, reaching out for the ladybug as it flew away. One of the legs of the table gave way. She didn’t get there in time.

  Below the balcony was the parking lot. Black asphalt.

  ‘Here, pumpkin.’

  Mahler held out the fork with a serving of food for Anna. She sat up in bed, took the fork and put it into her mouth. Mahler handed her the plate.

  Her face was red an
d swollen and there were grey streaks in her brown hair. She ate four bites, then handed back the plate.

  ‘Thank you. That was delicious.’

  Mahler put the plate down on Elias’ desk, put his hands in his lap. ‘Have you been out today?’

  ‘I’ve been with him.’

  Mahler nodded. Couldn’t think of anything else to say. When he stood up he banged his head into the wooden duck suspended over the bed. It flapped its wings a few times, swishing air across Anna’s face. Stopped.

  Back in his own apartment on the other side of the courtyard, he removed his sweat-drenched clothes, showered, pulled on his robe and took a couple of painkillers for the headache. He sat down at the computer and logged into Reuters. Spent an hour searching for and translating three items.

  A Japanese gadget that could translate the meaning of dogs’ barks. Siamese twins separated. A man who had built a house of tin cans in Lübeck. There was no photograph of the Japanese machine, so he searched for a picture of a Labrador and attached that. Sent it to the paper.

  Then he read an email from one of his old sources in the police who wondered how things were going for him these days, it had been a long time. He replied that things were hell, that his grandson had died two months ago and that he considered suicide daily. Deleted it without sending.

  The shadows on the floor had grown longer, it was past seven. He stood up out of the chair, massaging his temples. Went out into the kitchen and fetched a beer from the fridge, drank half of it standing up, wandered back to the living room. Ended up next to the couch.

  On the floor below the arm of the couch there was the Fortress.

  It had been a present to Elias on his sixth birthday four months earlier. The biggest Lego fortress. They had built it together and afterwards they had played with it in the afternoons, arranging knights in different places, making up stories, rebuilding and extending. Now it stood there just as they had left it.

  Every time Mahler saw it, it hurt. Each time he thought he should throw it away or at the very least take it to pieces, but he couldn’t. Most likely it would stay there as long as he lived, just as he would take the necklace to the grave.

  Elias, Elias…

  The abyss opened inside him. Panic came, the pressure on his chest. He hurried to the computer, logged into one of his porn sites. Sat and clicked for an hour, without so much as a movement in his groin. Only indifference, revulsion.

  Shortly after nine he logged out and shut down the computer. The screen wouldn’t turn off. He couldn’t be bothered with it. The headache had started to press on the insides of his eyes, making him agitated. He walked around the apartment a few times, drank another beer; finally stopped and crouched in front of the fortress.

  One of the Lego knights had leaned over the edge of the tower, exactly like he was shouting something to the enemy trying to break the door down.

  ‘Watch out or I’ll pour out the contents of our toilet on you!’ Mahler had said in a creaky voice and Elias had laughed until he lost his breath, shouting, ‘More! More!’ and Mahler had gone through all the terrible things that a knight could conceivably pour on someone else. Rotten yogurt.

  Mahler picked up the piece, turned it in his fingers. The knight had a silver helmet that partially concealed his resolute facial expression. The little sword he held in his hands was still shiny. The colour had flaked off the ones Elias had at home. Mahler looked at the shiny sword and two realisations dropped down through him like black stones.

  This sword will always remain shiny.

  I will never play, ever again.

  He replaced the knight, stared at the wall.

  I will never play, ever again.

  In the grief after Elias he had gone over all the things that he would never get to do again: walks in the forest, the playground, juice and sweet rolls at the cafe, the zoo park and more and more and more. But there it was, in all its simplicity: he would never play again, and that was not restricted to Legos and hide-the-key. With Elias’ death, he had lost not only his playmate but also his desire to play.

  That was why he couldn’t write, that was why pornography no longer stirred him and why the minutes went by so slowly. He couldn’t fantasise any longer, make things up. It should have been a blessed state, to live only in what is, what exists before one’s eyes, not to refashion the world. Should have been. But it wasn’t.

  Mahler fingered the scar from the operation on his chest.

  Life is what we choose to make it.

  He had lost his vigour, was chained to an overweight body that he would have to drag around joylessly in the days and years to come. He saw this, in a sudden realisation, and was overcome with the desire to smash something. The clenched fist trembled above the fortress, but he controlled himself, stood up and went out to the balcony where he grabbed the railing, shaking it.

  A dog was running around in circles down there, barking. Mahler would have liked to be doing the same thing.

  When in trouble, when in doubt

  Run in circles, scream and shout.

  He looked out over the railing, saw himself fall, split open against the ground like an overripe melon. The dog would maybe come over and start to gnaw at him. This thought made the act more tempting. To end his days as dog food. But the dog would probably not even notice, it seemed hysterical. Someone was probably coming to shoot it soon.

  He pressed his hands to the sides of his head. It would probably split open anyway if the pain continued to escalate like this.

  It was a little after half past ten when Mahler realised he probably did want to live after all.

  He had suffered his first attack eight years ago, when he was out interviewing a fisherman who had caught a corpse in his net. When they stepped ashore from the trawler, the light had all of a sudden dimmed, shrinking to a point, and then Mahler couldn’t remember anything more until he woke up lying on a pile of nets. If the fisherman had not been proficient in CPR, Mahler’s troubles would have been over.

  A doctor had told him that he had chronic myocarditis and needed a pacemaker to stabilise his heart. During that time Mahler had been so depressed that he’d considered taking his chances with death, but he had had the operation in the end.

  Then Elias came along and Mahler finally found a reason for even having a heart after all these years. The pacemaker had ticked along faithfully and allowed him to play grandpa as much as he wanted.

  But now…

  Beads of sweat broke out along his hairline and Mahler pressed his hand over his heart; it was beating twice as fast as normal. Somehow his heart was managing to duck out from under the steady beat of the pacemaker and race off on its own. Under his hand, Mahler felt his pulse increase even more.

  He put his fingers on his wrist, looked at the alarm clock and counted the seconds. He timed himself at 120 beats per minute, but he wasn’t sure that was correct. Even the second hand on the clock appeared to be moving faster than usual.

  Calm down…calm…it will pass.

  He knew that this kind of heart spasm was not dangerous in itself as long as it did not become too extreme. It was the worry, the anxiety that did the damage. Mahler tried to breathe calmly while his heart raced faster and faster.

  Then he had a thought. He placed his fingers over the pacemaker, the metal box just under his skin that was guarding his life. He couldn’t tell if it was going faster than normal, but he suspected that’s what was happening: the same thing that was happening to the clock.

  He curled up in a foetal position on the couch. The pain was going to split his head open, his heart was racing insanely and to his own surprise he saw that he did not want to die. No. At least, he did not want to be killed by a machine whipping up his heart until it burst. He looked up and squinted at the computer screen. Even that had become more intense, and all the icons were engulfed in shining white light.

  What should I do?

  Nothing. He should do nothing that would strain his heart any more. He sank back
again, resting his hand over the muscle of life. His heart was beating so quickly now that he could not make out the different pulses, it was a drum roll from the land of the dead increasing in tempo, and Mahler closed his eyes and waited for the climax.

  Just as he thought the drum skin was going to burst and vision close in, like that other time, it was over.

  The heart palpitations eased back to the old, deliberate rhythm. He lay completely still with his eyes closed, then breathed in deeply and felt his face as if checking that he was still there. His face was there; it was covered in sweat, warm drops trickling down through the folds on his belly, tickling.

  He opened his eyes. The icons on his computer were back, set against their usual cerulean background. Then the screen went dark. The dog in the yard stopped barking.

  What is happening?

  The clock was marking the seconds at a normal pace, and an enormous silence had fallen over the world. For the first time, now that they had stopped, he became aware of the cacophony of sounds and screams that had preceded this lull. He licked his salty lips, crouched down and stared at the clock.

  Seconds, minutes…one second we are born, one second we die.

  He had been lying there for twenty minutes or so when the telephone rang. He slid off the couch and crawled over to the desk. His legs would probably have carried him, but he felt that he should crawl. He pulled himself up onto the desk chair and lifted the receiver.

  ‘This is Mahler.’

  ‘Hi, Ludde here. At Danderyd.’

  ‘Oh…hi.’

  ‘I’ve got something for you.’

  Ludde had been one of his innumerable sources when he was working at the paper. As a custodian at Danderyd Hospital, he would sometimes hear or see things that could be ‘of public interest’, as Ludde put it.

  Mahler said, ‘I’m not working anymore, you’ll have to call Benke…Bengt Jansson, evening editor at…’

  ‘Listen, the stiffs have come back to life.’