Sara Stridsberg

WINNER

In the evenings they get away from the hospital. As the electric gates open and let the car through, the first bottle is uncorked in the back seat, always champagne that has been chilling in the cellar during the day. Edvard drives across the bridges in the direction of the city, through sleeping residential areas and streets. Sometimes a girl from the unit is already waiting in the back: sometimes it’s Sabina, sometimes it’s someone else, often half-comatose with medication. The birch trees shimmer in the twilight; Indian ink skies dappled with pink and yellow, stray wisps of cloud, birds, a haphazard drawing of the heavens. Edvard is convinced it’s good for the patients to get out of the unit every so often.

“One night beyond the confines of the hospital makes you human again,” he says.

Jim is given a crystal glass and in the glove compartment there’s a new shirt and a little bag of something that will make the night go faster. He sees the city pass by outside, men on their way home to their families, single women walking slowly along the streets, and sometimes, when they have stopped at a pedestrian crossing, waiting for the lights to change, he’ll find that he’s looking into the face of an old friend or colleague who’s standing there, waiting. Once, by a crossing outside the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, he looks straight into Lone’s face, before the car accelerates away and drives on through the light streaming out of the clubs that have just opened their doors to the night.

Once in a while a girl has a breakdown during the night in the apartment on Lill-Jans Plan and then she has to go back with them to the hospital at daybreak. “Winterson’s toys” they’re called, the girls who drift aimlessly around these parties, sometimes taking payment for their company, and, when they fall over, going back with Edvard in the car. They wake up later in an all-white room with his face hovering above them.

“Don’t be afraid, sweetheart. We’ll take care of you.”

“Where am I?”

“Never mind about that. You don’t need to think any more, my dear.”

Jim: The girls stayed at the hospital for months. They were girls no-one missed. Much later I learned that we were all called Winterson’s toys, not just the girls. I changed my clothes on the way into the city. Edvard wanted us to talk about girls. He was always in love with one of the patients. None of the women at the parties who came from outside interested him; for him only the patients existed. We drank copious amounts at these events; there was cocaine, grass, sleeping pills. He introduced me to beautiful rich people and somewhere out there in the city was what had been my life. It didn’t exist any longer. All there was were the nights when we drove out of the hospital grounds. The night Olof Palme died, lights were on in the apartments until late in the morning. People stood at windows, raising their glasses.

*

Some nights Sabina leaves the apartment on Lill-Jans Plan, her steps retreating down the stairs, and from the street she waves at Jim, who is sitting with a few older women and regaling them with his stories about the hospital. It’s like a game: if he can make them laugh, he doesn’t need to be afraid of them, of their wealth, of the ease with which they move about. He always manages it. They laugh with their hands pressed to their lips until red patches appear on their necks.

“There’s a whole world in the underground passages,” he says.

“Tree roots force their way down through the ceiling in some places. It’s incredible. Orphan kids used to run around down there before. Now it’s mainly Edvard riding around on his scooter.”

“And Edvard lets you come out like this?”

He touches a woman’s hand; the skin is wrinkled under the gold charms.

“Yes, it seems like it.”

On the way back a new girl is sitting in the back seat, looking out over the city, her eyes heavy. When Jim asks about Sabina, Edvard is taciturn.

“She’ll come back. Sabina’s never out for long. No more than a few days, at the most.”

“I thought she couldn’t wait to get out.”

Edvard gives a short laugh.

“She thinks so too.”

The Traneberg Bridge disappears in the quivering white light of dawn. It looks as though it leads nowhere, as though it has nothing to tether it at the other side. Jim closes his eyes and drops off. He is woken by guard dogs barking at the car. Edvard is sitting quite still beside him, looking out over the Klockhuspark.

*

The car door opens in front of Sabina as she’s on her way into Kungsträdgården. A voice she recognizes, pale hands with a light smattering of freckles in the darkness of the coupé’s interior, a wreath of smoke rising slowly to the roof. She’s wearing a bright blue jacket over her jeans, it’s early in the morning and she’s been up all night, counting stars. The sun filters through the trees as if through a magnifying glass; her hair is matted and dirty. In her veins the remains of a sedative that mixes with her blood and something else, something harder, crystalline, deadly, weightier than all love. The sky above shimmers gold. Solitary birds fly between the trees.

“Will you come back with me to the hospital?”

“What will I have to do there?”

“Maybe you’re tired. You might need to sleep.”

“Can you help me with that?” “You know I can.” “Death doesn’t want me, anyway.”

*

“Come in for a moment, child,” yells the shopkeeper, as he stands there, his enormous body blocking the doorway. I sidle into the darkness; the smell of death hits me and I draw it down into my lungs. The door closes behind us and each time I stretch out my hand and touch something, he shouts that I can’t have it. I ignore him.

“You look good in a hat. There are lots of hats that would suit you. I have a very nice slouch hat from Tokyo you can have a look at.”

He pats the fur gingerly, as if I were a real animal. When I say I’m looking for something special, for a friend who’s in hospital, he dashes through the shop. On his way, he knocks things over onto the floor, fans and candlesticks and a naked dummy. I carefully pick up the fans and put them back. The mannequin is lying overturned in front of me, her arms and legs twisted in a strange position. I step over her to make my way further into the shop. The man is gone for a while, and then he appears behind the curtain with a globe in his hands. A flex trails behind him on the ground.

“This is what you need. He can have a globe.”

He spins it with his fat fingers and they leave greasy marks on the oceans.

“It’s yours if you want it.”

I take it without looking at him and walk quickly towards the door. When I turn round he looks helpless, standing there with outstretched hands.

“Wait a minute. I can give it a wipe.”

“No need,” I say.

“Is it your dad who’s sick?” he asks suddenly, as if he knew me. Perhaps he sees everything that happens in the neighbourhood, perhaps he knows everything about us who live on Kammakargatan.

“It’s the Chernobyl cloud that’s made him ill,” I say, and hurry out of the shop.

“Oh, good Lord! How dreadful!”

His huge body begins to gather speed. He looks as though he wants to charge into my arms to comfort me. I slip out and let the door close behind me before he makes it.

In Adolf Fredrik’s churchyard, the gravestones shine like lone faces in the half-light. The evenings are so warm now, tropical.

*

I take the underground to Brommaplan and from there the bus to Beckomberga. At the hospital gates it’s usually only me who gets off. Sometimes I have something for Sabina, a silver package or a little bag. I’m becoming more and more tied to the hospital. I start to dream about it at night. I dream I’m falling and I dream about Jim, that he’s falling out of towering trees, that I’ve lost him before I’ve got to know him. I go to the hospital even when it’s not visiting time and they let me stay. Edvard arranges it so that I can come and go as I wish. I eat with Jim and the others and I sit beside him and the rest of them in the day room when they play dice in the evening. Jim is given permission to leave the hospital precinct and meet me at the bus stop, and he takes me back before dark. When the bus drives away with me into the violet dusk, he stands with his hand raised in farewell. I don’t know if he’s waving at me or shading his eyes against the light, but he’s probably already somewhere else in his thoughts, because when I raise my own hand, he remains motionless.

I stand in the hall in front of Lone. She must have been sitting in the dark, waiting for me, without switching on any of the lights. She carefully takes off my hat and runs her fingers through my hair, which is tangled and full of knots, and she looks at me as if she could see right through me. Heart, lungs, innards, soul.

“You have a big heart,” she says, putting the globe on one side without looking at it.

“Have I?”

Instinctively I hold my hand in front of my chest so she can’t see it, my heart in its pericardium, hiding behind my ribs. A big heart sounds like a deformity, a defect.

“Tell me about Jim.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Tell me about the hospital.”

I tell her that the flowers have come out in the Klockhuspark now, that there are flowers everywhere in the soft grass, and that the sunsets happen slowly, almost never-ending, as if the last light might well also be the first. When I say I’ve met Sabina, instantly a shadow passes over her face.

I like it when she tugs at my hair. It makes me drowsy and relaxed. My hair has got darker in the sun, the black sun of Lake Judarn. I wish she knew what the hospital looks like now, without the snow, without the darkness and the cold wind.

“You can go as often as you like, Jackie, but I want you to wake me when you come home. I want to know that you’re lying in your own bed at night.”

It’s a mystery what she does with her hands; when I open my eyes my hair is completely soft and shiny again.

“Do you think there’ll be a summer after Chernobyl?” I ask, so that she won’t take her hands away.

“I don’t know. I actually don’t know if there will be.”

“When will we know?”

“Maybe never. Some things we never get to know. I’d like to go to take photographs.”

“Isn’t it dangerous to be there?”

“It’s dangerous everywhere, Jackie.