Mia Ajvide
The Man Who Fell into Oblivion
1.
First Week
I want to sit in your memory
On a little, little stick and tree.
And if you ever forget me
The stick will turn and shred you.
Introduction
When Jack, secretly and for the second time in less than a week, watched his wife through the veranda window, he was clear about her forgetting him. And that she would never remember him again.
It was not her fault any more than anyone else’s. He had fallen out of her consciousness as naturally as a drop falls from a cloud. One moment it’s there, and then it’s gone.
Gone. His face touched the window glass and he jolted. His nose was still sore from Zoltan’s blow, forcing him to breathe through his mouth. His tongue was dry and stuck to the roof of his mouth.
Behind him the sky was brightening and the screaming of the terns cut through the air. A puff of breeze tossed a few sweaty locks hanging across his forehead, and he closed his eyes. This was the place where he wanted to be, surrounded by the sound of the sea and the birds. The house on the rock was his home.
He opened his eyes again, and shaded his eyes with his hand to get a better view through the window pane. Aino was sleeping. She lay curled up on his side of the bed and, in some obscure way, this comforted him. The duvet had left a bit of her shoulder bare. Her throat shone palely in the dawn light. Under her ear were some dark patches. Those were his love-bites, almost fading now. Soon they would disappear altogether, as unnoticed as his own disappearance.
He lifted his eyes to her face.
A string of saliva gleamed in the corner of her mouth. He put his fingertip against the window over the saliva and rubbed it, as if to wipe it off.
To be able to touch her. Caress her cheek and let his fingers brush against her skin. Feel the warmth of her spreading to his own body.
He was not allowed to. Not now.
Never again.
With a strangled sound he closed his hands, pressing his nails hard into his palms. When he had regained his self-control he put his hand on the door-handle. Slowly he pressed it down and the door opened without a sound.
”The door remembers me”, he thought, ”it’s letting me come in.”
CHAPTER 1
As long as you’re there
There were no circling ravens, no black cat crossing the road, on the day when Jack saw the first signs that he would be forgotten.
”Home at last”, he thought as he stepped out of the car.
It was one of the last days of April, and the vaulted skies over Ämtudden Point were grey and shaggy as a wolf’s pelt. But tufts of wood anemones shone under the ash, the buds would soon split open in the light.
”They’re like bombs”, he told himself as he walked up to the house. ”Except the other way round. Bombs of life.”
Although he had been in a hurry to get home, breaking the speed limit by almost thirty kilometres per hour, he took the time to cup his hands round a bud and breathe at the carapace. It was black and shiny like polished stone. But things were moving inside, he knew that. Thousands of invisible tongues lapped up his atoms of carbon dioxide, cell after cell was in the process of being rebuilt into a light green leaf, that would soon be one of a myriad of other green leaves tossing in the wind.
Everything was change.
He shivered in the wind that came in from the sea, then looked over at the house. Aino was waiting inside. He snatched up his bag and hurried towards the veranda. As usual, he knocked against the plank wall before he went inside.
Aino was not in the house. Among the crumbs on the kitchen table lay the morning newspaper, stained with tea. Her socks hung like two stones on the chair. He leaned against the draining board and watched the seagulls drifting past the window, while a sense of unease rose from his stomach.
He was aware of the fact that his need for her was greater than hers for him. ”I’m looking forward to being by myself for a while”, she might say when he let go of her and went to the car, ”and then it’ll be even better when you come home.”
He could not feel that way. Every hour away from Aino was a lost hour. He never told her.
With a sigh he put his hand in his pocket and took out a parcel. On the way from Myntholm he had stopped in the sports shop in Norrtälje to buy a present. When he saw the spinner with the clear red markings he took it off the wall without even looking at the price and put it on the counter. Aino dreamed of catching a sea-trout and was convinced that she’d succeed if she only had the right spinner. He brushed the crumbs away and put the parcel on the table.
The house was cold and he was shivering. But he didn’t feel like fetching wood or even burning the milk cartons lying piled up next to the fireplace. Instead he went from room to room, turning on the radiators.
When he came into Aino’s study he saw her sleeping bag on the floor. It was damp and smelled of smoke. So at least she’d come back from the sea. Her dirty laundry was on her desk and he couldn’t stop himself from bending over the pile and filling his lungs with its smell before continuing into the bedroom.
The bed was unmade. He resisted the impulse to straighten the bed linen and instead picked up the book that Aino had thrown on the floor. ”Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow.” He folded down a dog-ear on the open page, then closed the book with a slap and left it on the bedside table. Little splashes of rain struck the window and suddenly the wind intensified and rattled the panes. He glanced out onto the veranda. Aino was sitting there, hunched over some sheath-knives that she’d lined up on the table.
He strode up to the veranda door but stopped himself as he put his hand on the door-handle. She should have welcomed him. She had known he was coming home and he had expected that dinner might be ready; that they’d celebrate his homecoming with a bottle of wine.
He stayed by the window and hoped his disappointment would dissipate if he really saw her.
By now, the rain was running down the window without a sound. Aino’s jacket was wet over her shoulders and back. A lock of hair stuck to her brow. Her hair was not as curly as usual. It was almost straight. She was leaning forward, sliding one of the knives across a whetstone with measured movements. He looked at her sinewy hands and made himself think of how she used to put them on his shoulders, then slowly let them glide down his arms to take his hands.
Slowly he exhaled and pushed the veranda door open.
”Hi!”
Aino was startled and dropped the knife. Her mouth and eyes opened wide as she turned to look at him.
”You’re wet”, he continued. ”Aren’t you cold?”
Finally she smiled.
”Jack! Is it you?”
”Who else?”
He opened his arms and she stood up. When she reached him she put her hands round his back and squeezed him close.
”Welcome home”, she said.
Jack drew in the smell of her hair and closed his eyes.
”Thanks”, he said.
She hadn’t forgotten he was coming. But time had flown away with her, as it always did when she was doing something. The knives had been in poor condition and she needed them the following morning.
They sat opposite each other at the kitchen table and Aino twisted the spinner between her fingers. Jack picked up his mug of tea and drank in deep draughts. The refrigerator was empty but he didn’t want to argue about it. Not now. He reached out and caressed her cheek.
”Did you finish your sharpening?”
”I didn’t get home till about three and the knives have to be in order by tomorrow. My scout group is carving drinking-vessels for the hike on Listerö.”
Her voice sounded tense and tired. The survival course for the teachers from Lomma school had been demanding. For her own part, Aino was convinced that teachers were a menace. A gang of besserwissers who had views on more or less everything. As one might expect, the headmaster was the worst and the junior school teachers slightly better at surviving.
”If we wanted a revolution all we’d have to do is send people out into the wilds”, she said. ”Then we’d see results.”
She carried on talking about her concerns and Jack waited. He preferred to wait. When his turn came he wanted her undivided attention. The day’s events at Myntholm were major news. He picked up the tea pot and offered a refill; she nodded and held out her mug.
”We repaired the wind shields on Dunholmarna and the woodwork teacher insisted on staying the night out there”, she continued, reaching for the honey jar. ”He said there was a seal colony out on Norrkobbarna and he wanted to paddle off and have a look at them. I told him he couldn’t. It was blowing six, seven metres per second and the wind was picking up in the night. So we crawled into our sleeping bags and watched the stars instead.”
”You and the carpentry teacher?”
”Jonas, his name is. Don’t be silly. Did you see all the shooting stars?”
He hadn’t. His room had been in the basement of the hostel and from there one only had a view of pine trees. He shook his head and stifled a yawn.
”I had a late night”, he said, ”and then I was up early this morning.”
”We decided that we’d paddle out to Norrkobbarna some day. I just have to see those seals.”
Jonas, she’d said his name was. Suddenly Jack did not want to hear any more and he pushed back the chair from the table. Aino kept her eyes on him as he took his cup to the sink.
”He doesn’t have a boat or a canoe”, she continued.
”I’m taking a shower”, he interrupted. ”And then I have something to tell you.”
Drops of water ran down the mirror glass and his skin had flushed in the heat of the shower. For a fleeting moment Jack thought he was good-looking. But his face was flat and hard, like an insect, and his dark, deep-set eyes made him look voracious. Before setting off on a guided tour, as he stood there with his hand on the door-handle outside the drawing room at Myntholm Castle, listening to the expectant murmuring of voices within, it was not unknown for him to lament the fact of his ugliness. The visitors who came to Myntholm had a right to expect something more. These were people who laboured year in, year out in some school canteen or government office. The humdrum days had etched traces round their eyes and mouths, but when they stood in the flickering light of the candelabra in the drawing room he knew that they felt beautiful.
Of course they had dreams and he, as their tour guide, was a part of those dreams.
Jack sloshed after-shave on his face and heard the clear voice of Allison Krauss from the living room. ”In this world I walk alone, with no place to call my home”. A wave of joy spread through his body. He never stopped being grateful about not having to be alone any more, and for having a place to call home. In actual fact he was not so concerned about what Myntholm’s visitors dreamt or thought. As long as he was a part of her dreams he was happy.
The moment he came out of the bathroom all the joy ran out of him. Aino was not sitting in the sofa, waiting for him. Instead she’d gone into her study and closed the door. Jack got out the wine glasses from the kitchen cupboard, then slammed it. In the ensuing silence he heard her laughing, and he realised she was talking to someone on the telephone. He went into the living room and turned up the volume of the CD.
He poured himself a glass of wine and did not switch on the electric lights even though dusk was falling outside the windows. Allison Krauss went silent. From the garden came the soft sound of someone dragging a branch.
When Aino at long last finished her telephone call and came into the room, he reached out and turned on the lamp. She blinked at the light and looked round confusedly. When she noticed him in the sofa she clapped her hand over her mouth but it didn’t help. Her scream bounced off the walls.
”You scared me!” she panted.
He saw her fear turn to anger in her eyes. Then she turned away and shook her head, as if it were his fault that she’d been startled. He shrugged.
”Who were you talking to?” he asked. ”The man without a canoe?”
”Yes.”
His anxiety, which up until now had fluttered round his stomach like a butterfly, set itself down with a thump. His saliva ran dry and his voice trumpeted thickly as he continued:
”Why were you calling him?”
”I’d promised I would. Do you want to know what we were talking about?”
”No.”
Aino threw her arms out, as if unsure what else to do. Then sighed deeply and took a few steps towards him.
”Jack, sorry. I’m an idiot”, she said.
She sank down on the floor in front of him and threw her arms round his knees. The scent of her body, which he noticed particularly just before they fell asleep, rose into his nostrils. When her hand fumbled for his, he pulled her up into the sofa and together they slid back into the cushions. The hard muscles in her back grew taut, moved like ropes under his hands while he held her tightly.
Flat and hard as two planks they lay silent, stretched out on top of one another. Her arms were locked behind his neck and it was hot in the room. The damp skin on her forehead gleamed and the light reflected through her hair. It had dried and was curly once again.
”Hold me tighter!”
She repeated the order quietly in his ear and he pressed her closer. Pressed her chest against him until his muscles started trembling.
As if on a given signal, they released each other and took off their clothes. She sat bolt upright on top of him and closed her legs round his hips. He gripped her shoulders, head, breasts and felt the skin on her back coming up in goose bumps. His hands were not enough; he kissed, licked and bit until she collapsed laughing into his arms. That was when he penetrated her. And there, at the furthest point inside, was life. With the same irresistible force that made the ash tree’s buds burst into the light, he took off and flew with Aino.