Part 3 (1/2)

Another deep sigh. She lowers her head and clasps her hands around her knee. In a quiet, solemn way that makes me think of a nun or something. And suddenly she looks more sad than angry and there's something in her facial expression, something in the deep furrow between her eyebrows, in the sharp lines around her mouth, that makes me think that she is older than she first seemed. There is something resigned and maybe a little cynical about her revelation.

”I don't get it, I don't get it, I don't get it,” Malin wails. ”How could I be so d.a.m.n stupid? I went to his place, the home of this guy I'd never met, alone, drunk. What the h.e.l.l was I thinking anyway? Then, when I got there-he lives down in those apartment buildings by the beach, out by the sports field-I had such a strange feeling when he opened the door. He gave me this . . . this really weird look and kind of smiled, but not in a nice way. I had this feeling that he was laughing at me for some reason, like you would laugh at someone who had done something clumsy, you know, spilled a gla.s.s on the tablecloth or . . . Whatever, I could have turned around and left then. It's not like he jumped on me right there by the front door, but I felt so dumb, so I went in anyway. So incredibly stupid.”

The room is completely quiet. Everyone is looking at Malin, sitting there hunched over in her chair. Her muscular arms are wrapped around herself, as if she were cold or looking for comfort from her own body.

”Okay, maybe the way I was dressed wasn't that great either,” she says. ”It was a very, uh . . . short skirt . . . I know, I know, people always say that doesn't matter. Obviously that didn't have anything to do with it. Obviously that shouldn't have had anything to do with it. But sometimes I wonder . . . If I'd have been sober. If I'd have been dressed differently . . . like in something that was just totally uns.e.xy. If I'd gone there after a run, really needing a shower, ugly, with really bad breath. Would that have mattered? Did I contribute in some way to what he did? Even though, obviously, it's not supposed to matter what you wear.”

Malin sighs again deeply, with her arms still wrapped around her body as if she were wearing a straitjacket.

”Anyway. We talked for a while in his kitchen. Drank a little more beer. And . . . well, then we made out a little, and I was totally into that. But then suddenly something happened, it was like he changed, got rough. Or maybe I changed, because suddenly I felt like I didn't want to do anything else, and I told him so. I told him to stop, that I didn't want to. I said it a bunch of times. I may have screamed. I don't really remember. But he just pushed me down on the kitchen floor and held me there with one arm on my neck while he shoved his fingers into me. And I . . . I just lay there because I couldn't move. I could hardly breathe. He was so incredibly strong. I mean, I'm strong, but he was . . . And it was like he was furious at me, like he suddenly hated me, like he wanted to kill me. I can't understand where all that rage came from, what I said or did that made him get so extremely p.i.s.sed off. I've been thinking about it, I mean, since it happened, about why he got so mad. And then there's that whole powerless thing. I'm so used to being a strong person, but I just lay there, totally powerless. Looking under his refrigerator, noticing that there was a ton of dust under there, thinking that he must not have cleaned under there in ages. Dust and little bits of old cheese and food wrappers. Why do I remember that? Why would anyone ever think about something like that when-”

Suddenly Malin stops talking. She sits there quietly with her hands clenched around her knee.

”And then he did it.”

”Malin,” I say, ”sometimes it can be a relief to describe the actual crime in a little more detail. It often feels really uncomfortable, but in the long run it can help you move beyond the rape.”

Malin nods mutely. She doesn't look like she thinks it's a good idea.

I explain, ”If you don't want to say anything else about it today, we can come back to it some other time. You don't need to feel like there's any kind of pressure.”

”No, I want to,” Malin continued. ”Talk about it, I mean. The fact that he . . . raped me there, on the floor in the kitchen. He was shouting the whole time too, 'wh.o.r.e' and 'c.u.n.t,' stuff like that. And that's when it clicked for me, that this was serious, that this was for real. For a while I thought it was just kind of a joke, a prank that was just coming off wrong, maybe. But then . . . even though I got that it was for real, it didn't feel like I was actually there. It was like he was. .h.i.tting someone else, someone else's body. It felt like I was sitting there at that little kitchen table looking down at us lying on the floor, thinking, 'This doesn't look good. I wonder if she's going to get away.' Like I was some stupid sportscaster. I came to the conclusion that he was strong and fast, and I was . . . drunk and stupid. The odds weren't very good, you know? Then-I don't know if this was the a.s.sault or something else, some defensive mechanism maybe-but I just got totally pa.s.sive. Like he could do whatever he wanted with me. And he did.”

Malin's voice has dropped to a faint, scratchy whisper. Her eyes remain trained on the linoleum floor in front of her.

”He raped me several times, v.a.g.i.n.ally, a.n.a.lly, hitting me in between rounds, not as much as in the beginning. It was like . . . he was running out of energy. He slapped my face a little now and then, kicked me a little, pulled my hair. But in general he kind of lost interest more and more as time went by. I just lay there in . . . my blood and . . . my own urine and . . . and . . .”

”How long did all this take?” Aina asks in a surprisingly steady voice.

”How long?” Malin seems taken aback by the question. ”How long? At least a few hours anyway.”

”A few hours? That's crazy,” Kattis says, upset.

”What happened? Did you manage to get away?” Sirkka asks cautiously.

”He fell asleep. That s.h.i.+thead fell asleep. Can you believe it?” Malin says. ”He fell asleep right there on the kitchen floor and all, and I could just walk away. So I did the normal thing, went home and showered and scrubbed and showered. I tried to get him off my body, out of my body. I reported him to the police four weeks later. By then, obviously, there was no physical evidence left, no visible injuries either, but the police said they had a good case. He had evidently molested some girl six months earlier and the police found . . . what's it called? Rohypnol at his place. They said that was why he was so aggressive, kept at it for so long. Rohypnol combined with alcohol apparently has that effect.

”But I wonder,” Malin continues. ”I wonder if some people don't just have it in them to do something like that to someone, to another living being. Doesn't that just mean you're a monster to begin with? I don't think it had anything to do with drugs. I think he was . . . evil. And then, at the trial, there was a ton of mumbo jumbo about how he had been molested by some kid a few years older than him in Hagsatra in the early nineties, as if it were contagious, as if that were some excuse. Like that would matter to me. They said that's why he liked rough s.e.x. That's what he said, you know, that we'd had s.e.x before, and that it had been rough and that I'd liked it, had been into it, had wanted it. Then they used our text messages to prove that we'd had a relations.h.i.+p. And true, there were a few messages where I'd written things that were sort of suggestive, but . . . Anyway, you'll never believe what happened next. His buddies from Gustavsberg gave him an alibi for that night. They said they'd all been at the movies right when the rape occurred and that, anyway, they knew we were having some kind of relations.h.i.+p, that we were 'f.u.c.k buddies,' as they say. How could anyone do something like that? How could anyone lie about something like that, protect such a . . . monster? They totally let him off. I see him around town all the time. A few months later we ran into each other at the liquor store downtown. He waved and smiled, like we knew each other, more or less.”

Malin pauses briefly and then adds, ”I wish I'd killed him, to stop it from happening, or that he'd killed me.”

”Why do you say that?” Sofie asks, again very softly.

”Because he messed something up inside me, like, in my soul. He took something, something that no one should ever be allowed to take. He . . .” Malin's voice fades away.

”What did he take from you, do you think?” Sirkka asks, leaning over so that her frizzy red hair glows like a fiery halo in the light from the overhead fixture.

”He took . . .” Malin stops and sniffles, wipes away snot with the back of her hand, and slowly shakes her head. ”He took away the child in me. I mean, the child that I was. He took all my trust, all my self-confidence. He took away who I was. And he took away the person I want to be.”

Sirkka sighs deeply. She looks like someone slapped her, both shocked and p.i.s.sed off at the same time. Timidly and without saying anything, she holds her thin, wrinkly hand out to Malin, touches her hesitantly on the knee.

”Oh, my dear child, I take back what I said before about how I wished I could trade places with you young girls.”

We sit in silence for a long while, no one saying anything. Outside the darkness has settled over Sodermalm, in the heart of Stockholm, indifferent to what has just played out in my office.

Markus's body is on top of mine, hot, hard.

Is it the wrong body?

Stefan.

And yet it still feels so right, as if I'd found my way home in some way, as if this warm body will heal all my wounds.

Heal me.

We argued about it this very afternoon. Markus's voice like sandpaper, trying to strip away all my armor, get me to open up, the uncomfortable feeling of being a fruit that someone is trying to peel, to inspect the insides of, to devour.

”You never let me in. You . . . let me be with you, next to you, but you do your own thing. It's as if I weren't here, as if I were dead, like him, your ex.”

”Markus, honey . . . ,” I say, my voice feeble, pleading.

”Everything is on your terms,” he complains.

I don't respond. I know he's right. I know that he knows that I know.

”You and your process . . . ,” he sneers.

My process.

I have tried to explain as gently as possible how Stefan, even though he's dead, is still strangely present in my life, how I don't know if I can commit to someone else, because it's not about what I want.

Or is it?

I could tell by looking at him that that hurt, and I can appreciate that. I don't want him the way he wants me. He wants the whole package: ring on the finger, white picket fence, snot-nosed kids, parent-teacher conferences at the daycare, mortgage, soccer practice, barbecuing with the neighbors.

I don't know what I want. My life is like water, reflecting my surroundings, but without any color or flavor of its own. It slips away if you try to catch it.

And yet, he is a grown man. He's making his own bed.

Well, just leave already if this isn't working for you!