Part 21 (2/2)

The man made a small sound of disagreement and said, 'Kaxe.'

'Sorry?'

'Kaxe. That's what I'm usually called.'

'Kaxe?'

'Mmm.'

Anna nodded. Kaxe nodded. Josef nodded. Anyone watching through the window would have thought they were all in perfect agreement.

An uncomfortable silence. Anna looked around. Three men with a southern European appearance were sitting by the newspaper section, absorbed in old news from their homelands. She didn't know what to say, so gesturing towards the street outside she asked, 'So do you live here?'

Without the slightest hint of a smile Kaxe replied, 'No, I just come in here for a cup of tea.'

I can't do this.

On another day she might have been able to make an effort in order to penetrate the barriers of hostility between her and Kaxe, but not today. So instead she said, with exaggerated briskness, 'Anyway, I must...get on.' She glanced at Josef and added, 'Have a nice time,' and turned to leave.

Kaxe raised his hand.

'Sail in peace, sister.'

She got out into the street and had no idea where to go. Nothing had actually happened. Except that everything was...wrong.

As she had expected, Josef came hurrying after her.

'Anna...Anna?' he said.

'Hi.'

'Don't you want to come in?'

'No, it all felt a bit too...difficult.'

Josef looked down at the ground, chewing his lower lip. 'I was thinking...of inviting him round one day?'

'Right. Yes. Fine.'

This approval didn't make Josef any happier. He folded his arms, kept moving his feet up and down. Anna waited. She was well aware that he was on the point of telling her what this was all about, and she was equally well aware when the impulse left him. He put his face close to hers and said, 'Trust me.'

She threw her hands wide. 'Josef, I don't understand.'

'You will. I promise.'

'Josef, this isn't good. You talking like this, the fact that we... that we can't...'

Josef clamped his lips together.

'I know, I know, I know. It's for our sake, OK? I promise. I love you. I love you.'

A sense of grief swept through Anna. Something had been lost here, on the steps outside Norrtalje library. But still she said, 'I love you too. What are you up to?'

Josef looked slightly relieved.

'Soon,' he said with a grin. 'It's a kind of surprise for your birthday.' He laughed. 'When it's ready I'll tell you everything. OK?'

Anna nodded, even though it wasn't OK at all. She went into the library and browsed listlessly through the CDs for a while. Then Josef came in and they went home in the car together.

He asked how her work had gone, and she said it was c.r.a.p. It was pointless, all of it. He tried to console her, telling her that she'd done so much that was really good, maybe it was to do with the child, things were bound to improve. He did it mechanically. His mind was elsewhere.

While Anna was in the library, it had been decided that Kaxe would come to visit them on Thursday.

Those days, those days between Christmas and New Year...

Josef was somehow transformed once again. Before he went to work on Tuesday he laid out her breakfast and wrote her a little note: he would be lost without her, she meant everything to him. When he got home he was full of affection, stroking her arm, her back, the nape of her neck at every opportunity. He wanted to get close to her again, wanted to get back in. But he wanted it now, he wanted it quickly, and it was like carrying out an archaeological dig with a great big mechanical digger. Things got broken along the way.

She spent the mornings staring at her paintings and searching her heart and mind. She ruined a beautiful piece of driftwood by painting Kulkan from Dungeons and Dragons on it, complete with grazing sheep. But she made the sheep into skeletons, grazing in a meadow where the gra.s.s was fingers, the sun a grinning skull.

When she took a step back and looked at the painting as a whole, she felt happy with something she'd done for the first time in a couple of months. The combination of tourist kitsch and romantic horror had something. The fact that the picture had been dashed off quickly didn't matter at all; the blurred lines gave it a dreamlike quality.

For the rest of the day she felt happier than she had for a long time. She did bits and pieces around the house, listening to her body. The child was there. Even when it wasn't kicking or moving she could feel its presence like a faintly perceived tickling sensation, another person in the room. There were two of them now.

When Josef got home she showed him the driftwood picture and he laughed until he cried. Said he would happily have coughed up two thousand for it if he'd been a visitor. She gave it to him. He said he was going to hang it in the staffroom at the nursery, perhaps with a little sign saying SMOKING KILLS.

'Sheep don't usually smoke, Josef.'

'No, but these did, and look what happened.'

That evening Josef talked about Kaxe. He was a philosopher, or at least a student of philosophy. He had read through the history of philosophy and had come out on the other side feeling totally disillusioned. He was the most depressing person Josef had ever met. As if to prove the idea that inner emptiness leads to disease, he had contracted leukaemia and had only a year to live at the most.

While Josef was telling her this, he kept biting his nails. Anna gently took his hand and moved it away from his mouth.

'Josef, what is it?'

'Nothing, I just...I feel sorry for him.'

Anna took a deep breath. 'This business with...with Kaxe. Does it have anything to do with your accident?'

Josef's little finger found its way back to his teeth. He nibbled on the nail for a while, then said, 'He wants to die.'

Anna waited for the next bit, but nothing came. In the silence the words still hung in the air. He wants to die. She opened her mouth to get him to continue, but Josef got there first. 'What were you thinking of doing on Thursday?'

'On Thursday?'

'Yes. When he comes round.'

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