He had stopped asking for forgiveness. He talked about the weather. After a couple of hours at their favorite pub on Söder, the atmosphere was better and there were glimpses of how they used to be. In those moments, Adam’s face lit up like a 100-watt bulb. When they talked about her knee, he agreed that it sounded like something wasn’t right.
‘Unfortunately, it’s probably the cruciate ligament. I’m also guessing there is a meniscus splinter stuck here.’ With practised fingers, he pushed carefully on Vera’s joint.
‘I think so too, I’ve said so, but…’
‘You have very little thigh muscle left to stabilize it.’ He felt her left leg without embarrassment and looked concerned, ‘You are being really careful, aren’t you? You can easily twist it so it rips even more. It wouldn’t take much external force at this point.’
‘I know. I have a doctor’s appointment again in a month, so they’ll have to come up with a solution then.’ Vera shifted position, uncomfortable with Adam’s touching her.
‘Västerbotten County government,’ sighed Adam and removed his hands. ‘Pity I’m not an orthopaedic surgeon. I would have gone in and fixed it right away.’
‘Yes, you would have,’ Vera admitted.
‘And we would have done the ears too,’ smiled Adam as he stroked one of Vera’s ears.
It had been a standing joke between them, that he would remove some of the cartilage that made her ears stick out unusually far from her head. And she usually joked back that it would have been a good idea, if it wasn’t such a waste of resources. Because seriously, although it was tiresome that the priest at their confirmation classes had called her ‘You there, with the ears’, there was nothing really wrong with them. They didn’t hurt and her hearing was good. There were lots of people with real problems who didn’t get the surgical help they needed. Like her knee right now. Or the people with burn injuries in Colombia whom Adam could have given new faces, if only he had been there. But this time she couldn’t make jokes about her protruding ears. It was like something was stuck in her throat.
They sat close together on the bus home to the apartment on Liljeholmen, trapped in the moisture and heat with strangers who politely avoided each other’s eyes by looking out at the city, which was cloaked in a grey drizzle. Vera realized that she felt terribly lonely sitting beside her husband and all these people. When the radio station blaring forth from the driver’s seat switched pop songs, it hit Vera all at once. As soon as she heard ‘I know you want it, it’s easy to see,’ her breathing became uneven and she realized helplessly that it was going to get worse. She stared at the floor of the bus, at the black and yellow striped tape warning passengers to be cautious. She tried in vain to get her lungs to work normally.
Pitiful. That is what she had become. She – who used to dare to do everything she wanted to do. She had dared to work at a field hospital, in the midst of communicable diseases, mere kilometers from the war. But now she couldn’t even deal with the sound of a little dance music. Vera felt a rising pressure in her chest and her hands tingled and started to go numb. In the end, she made a decision. Panic-stricken, she pushed the stop button, got up and stumbled off the bus as soon as it stopped. Full of questions, Adam grabbed her backpack and followed her.
‘I feel sick,’ was all Vera managed to say as she hobbled anxiously along the edge of the park, looking for an undisturbed corner. There was no tree cover, no dense vegetation, no big rocks. At last, in desperation, she lifted the lid of a dog-waste bin. There was a pile of black plastic bags inside, and the stench overwhelmed her. She vomited on the disgusting pile of plastic and closed the lid. Her delicious lunch – thrown up on the park’s collected dog shit. She dried her mouth on a wet hazel leaf that nature had kindly provided. Weakly, she sank down on a wet park bench. Adam dried off a patch of the bench with his gloves and, pale, sat down beside her. Awkwardly, he put his arm on her shoulder.
‘Darling Vera… I’ll call a taxi.’ He got out his mobile phone and began pressing buttons.
Ominous thoughts came into Vera’s head. ‘Darling Vera’? What do you mean by that? Unspoken questions filled her whole world. She noticed that he was worriedly seeking eye contact with her, but she continued to watch the rain hitting the grass. All she could think was, you have to stop saying that!
‘How do you feel?’ he asked when he opened the door of the taxi for her.
She was wet; she was shivering, but at least the empty, hard knot that was her stomach felt calmer. ‘Better, I guess.’
He stroked her hand as, in silence, they travelled the short distance to the three-room apartment that they had renovated together.
‘Maybe you’d like to take a warm bath?’ he asked in the elevator, and tears formed in her eyes at the familiarity of his thoughtfulness.
‘Maybe,’ she managed to say before turning to face the corner and pretending to look for something in her backpack so he wouldn’t see her tears. She shuddered in the face of what she now knew. If I just go inside it will be better, she promised herself. Come home? Come… in.
But the metallic click of the key in the lock released a seeping anxiety. Adam went straight into the bathroom and began to fill the bathtub. Vera stepped hesitantly into what had been her home. She went into the half-renovated kitchen and ran her hand over the tiling that they had chosen together. She was listening to the second hand moving with precision around the face of the kitchen clock when she caught sight of something in the dish drainer – my cup! At least it’s washed now. Was that what he had planned to do with himself too… And then just act like normal again, clinically correct, as if nothing had happened? The sound of running water stopped.
‘I did the laundry; I’ll just run down and get it so you have clean towels.’
She heard Adam’s happy voice disappear out into the stairwell. His light steps on the stairs were a cruel contrast to what was going on inside her.
She walked around in the apartment, her eyes wandering. She remembered that the only thing she had thought about when she had been rescued was coming home here and seeking protection. On the painful trip over the Atlantic she had pictured how Adam would build a fire in the fireplace, sit on the sofa with her in his arms and soothingly stroke her back. And everything would heal. But it hadn’t turned out that way at all. The coffee table caught her attention and something inside her protested violently: I don’t like surprises any more than you do! And once again it was as if she were lying defenseless and the only thing between her and the guerrilla was the darkness and a little downy grass.
She knew that a bus would be arriving at the stop across the street in about three minutes. If she could just keep out of sight so that he didn’t see her… She grabbed her backpack and left.
Cissi kept her promise. Vera accompanied her back to her office after her lectures, and Cissi explained what Future Wealth and Welfare involved. Vera was given tomes and compendiums to read through, and then Friday came, the day she was to be interviewed by the department’s executive board. The board members would decide if she was a suitable representative of ‘the common people’, yet also capable of saying something of interest about future welfare.
On the way down the hall, Vera whispered, ‘What do you think they’re sitting there hoping for?’
Cissi grinned crookedly. ‘They probably want a car mechanic with a burning interest in financial derivatives. Unfortunately, I don’t know any, and I think it would be hard to find one given the time constraints we’ve been working under…’
It wasn’t an answer to lessen Vera’s nerves.
Aware of the seriousness of the situation, Vera was pale-faced as she entered the seminar room. Its walls were decorated with portraits of straight-backed men, each one bearing a plaque engraved with the date of their promotion to professor. The executive