Thirty-one

Ann Lindell was awakened by the sound of the phone ringing. She reflexively threw herself over the phone and at the same time registered the time on the clock radio: 01:03.

Twice this angry signal had woken her up in the middle of the night. The first time it had been work related and on the other occasion, about a year ago, it was her mother calling at half past two in the morning to say that Ann’s father had been taken to the hospital because of heart problems.

This time it was about Ann herself. She answered sleepily and the first thing she heard was music.

“Hello?”

The dryness of her mouth made her wet her lips.

“Hi,” a voice said on the other end, and Ann immediately knew it was the voice of a drunk person, “it’s me, Challe.”

Challe, Ann thought, drawing a blank until she realized who it was. She sat up in bed. Her mouth was like a desert and she felt the throb of a headache.

“It’s one o’clock in the morning,” she said.

“I’m sorry, but I had to call,” Charles Morgansson said and Ann heard him straining to sound somewhat sober.

“You’re drunk.”

“I had to call,” he repeated, “everything went so wrong. You understand . . . it went wrong. I . . . we have to talk.”

“Now?”

“Can I come by?”

“Are you still at the restaurant?”

“I stayed,” Charles said and suddenly Ann was wide awake.

“You call me up in the middle of the night, drunk out of your mind, and you want to talk. What the hell about?”

“Can I come by?”

Ann got up out of bed. Never, she thought, I’ll never let in a drunk Morgansson, a man who has treated me as if I were an escort.

“I don’t think so,” she said, at the same time pulling away the curtain and looking out at the parking lot. The electric lights were reflected in the roofs of the cars. It had rained. A lone person came walking along the street and turned into the parking lot, stopped, and lit a cigarette.

In the receiver she heard Frank Sinatra’s voice and the clinking of glasses. The man in the parking lot stood in place while he puffed once on his cigarette and looked around. For one moment Ann thought he was going to steal a car but the man continued his lonely walk, walking diagonally across the parking squares, and aiming for one of the building entrances. As he came closer she recognized him as one of the neighbors. They had exchanged a few words outside. Ann knew he lived alone but sometimes was visited by his teenage son.

“Charles,” she said, and she could imagine him sitting on a high bar stool, leaning over his glass with the tall bartender on the other side of the counter. “I don’t know what you want. You invited me to dinner and then sent me away like a piece of mail. Now you call me at one o’clock in the morning and you want to come over. What kind of a person do you think I am?”

“I’m sorry,” Morgansson said again, “I just want to talk. I know I’ve behaved like an idiot but sometimes I get stuck.”

Stuck, Ann thought and shook her head.

“I like you,” Morgansson said, “but things went a little wrong. I chickened out and . . .”

Ann heard a voice thundering in the background.

“. . . I have to stop now. I’m not allowed to talk anymore. I’m disturbing you . . . ?”

His voice sounded incredibly sad.

“We’ll be in touch,” he said. “My apologies . . .”

“Wait,” Ann said quickly. “The code downstairs is four-three-one-one.”

“I know it,” Morgansson said and Ann realized his cousin must have given it to him. “Does that mean I can come over?”

“I can’t fall back asleep immediately anyway,” Ann said and hung up, afraid of more words, tired of excuses, and amazed at her own compliance.

Charles turned up twenty minutes later. During that time Ann had brushed her teeth and washed her face, looked at herself in the mirror, pulled on her robe, had time to figure out her approach, and had time to change her mind several times.

“Thanks,” was the first thing Morgansson said.

She let him in and walked without a word to the living room, where she had turned on the lamp in the window.

He had sobered up somewhat but looked like a sad dog. They sat quietly for a moment before he started to talk.

“I left a woman in Umeå,” he started.

Ann closed her eyes. I should have guessed, she thought tiredly Why do I let this happen?

“I liked her but I couldn’t stay there, and she didn’t want to move. She is a researcher at the university.”

“Why did you have to leave?”

Morgansson lifted his head and looked at her. Now he looked completely sober.

“I ran over a little girl,” he said. “Every time I went downtown I replayed it over and over again. It became a nightmare.”

“What girl?”

“She ran out from between two cars. I didn’t have a chance to brake or veer. She died after half a day. It was ruled an accident but for me it was . . . she was eight years old.”

He stopped.

“Do you want anything?”

Morgansson shook his head.

“Her mom was standing on the other side of the street.”

“I’m sorry,” Ann said.

She was struck by the thought of checking into the story with an Umeå colleague that she knew.

“It became impossible for me to work,” Charles continued. “I thought about that girl all the time. Ronja was her name, like that robber’s daughter in Astrid Lindgren’s book. And about her mother’s scream.”

“So you left Umeå?”

“I had to, so I wouldn’t go crazy.”

“And your girlfriend?”

“She stayed. I think she was a little tired. I dreamed a lot at night. Went a bit cuckoo. She was working at home on her dissertation and I was on sick leave. It didn’t work. In the daytime I walked around like a restless spirit and at night . . . well, you know.”

Ann stood up and moved to the couch.

“Let’s go to bed,” she said and saw him tense up.

“We can hug but nothing more, okay?”

He looked at her quickly and nodded.

“Okay,” he said, his voice cracking.