We Know You Remember (3)

He opened the door and the water surged out over his shoes.

There was a sponge floating inside, dirt and loose hair, dead flies. The striped shower curtain was closed, and Olof felt the cold water seep through his socks as he stepped into the room. He could do that, if nothing else: try to turn off the water before he left, so the house wouldn’t be completely ruined. He pulled back the curtain.

There was someone sitting behind it. A crooked body slumped in an unfamiliar chair. Olof knew what he was looking at, but he couldn’t quite process it. The old man was hunched over, completely white. In the sunlight filtering through the window, his skin seemed to glisten like the scales of a fish. Tendrils of wet hair were plastered across his scalp. Olof managed to take another step forward to reach the knob, and the water finally stopped flowing.

Other than his own hoarse breathing and the flies buzzing against the windowpane, he couldn’t hear a sound. The last few drops of water. The naked body seemed to draw his gaze, holding it firmly. The man’s skin seemed loose somehow, with greenish patches across his back. Gripping the handbasin, Olof leaned in. He couldn’t see the man’s eyes, but his prominent nose had a bump in the middle, an old bandy injury from his youth. He saw the man’s penis, crooked as a worm between his legs.

Then the handbasin came loose from the wall. A deafening crash, as though the house itself were falling down, and he lost his balance. Splashed around, hitting his head on the washing machine, slipping when he tried to get up.

Crawling on all fours, he managed to leave the bathroom and struggle to his feet.

Out of there.



He slammed the door behind him and locked up. Put the key back where he had found it and walked towards the car as quickly and as normally as he could. He started the engine and put it into reverse, ramming into the bin.

Plenty of old people died like that, he thought as he pulled away, his heart still beating so hard he could hear it thundering in his ears. They had a heart attack or a stroke and then just keeled over and died. The police wouldn’t care. A lot of them live alone, some aren’t found until years later.

But why had he shut the dog in?

Olof slammed on the brakes. There it was, right in front of him, standing in the middle of the road. Another ten meters and he would have flattened the stupid thing. Mouth open, tongue lolling out, shaggy and excited and jet black. It looked like the product of some kind of wild dalliance in the woods, with the head of a Labrador and the coat of an overgrown terrier, ears standing to attention.

Olof revved the engine. He had to deliver the car, a beautiful Pontiac, a real find; it needed to be parked outside the boss’s garage by morning, the key hidden in the usual place.

But the dog wasn’t moving.

If he blasted the horn, the neighbors might have heard it and put two and two together, so instead he got out and shooed it. The dog glared at him.

“Get out of the way, you stupid bastard,” he hissed, throwing a stick at it. The dog caught it midair and bounded forward, dropping it by his feet and wagging its entire rear end as though it thought life were some kind of damn game. Olof hurled the stick as far as he could into the woods, and the dog charged after it through the bilberry bushes. He was just about to climb back into the car when he heard footsteps on the gravel behind him.

“Nice ride,” a voice called out. “Not exactly what you expect to see out here in the sticks.”

Olof saw a man approaching with fast, light steps. He was wearing a pair of long shorts and a polo shirt, white canvas shoes. He patted the black lid of the boot as though it were a horse.

“Trans Am third generation, right?”

Olof had frozen with one foot in the car, the other on the road.

“Mmm, an eighty-eight,” he mumbled into the paintwork. “It’s heading to Stockholm, Upplands Bro.” He wanted to say that he was in a hurry, that he had to get going before the summer traffic built up; it was Midsummer’s Eve, a Friday, meaning there would be queues in every direction, and on top of that there were warnings about roadworks and lane closures between Hudiksvall and G?vle. But he couldn’t get the words to come out. The dog had also returned with the stick, nudging him with its nose.

“So it’s not for sale?”

“It’s not mine. I’m just driving it.”

“And you ended up here?”

The man was smiling, but Olof could hear what lay behind his voice, behind his smile. There was always something else there.

“Just needed to take a leak.”

“And you chose this road? Sorry for asking, but we’ve had a bit of trouble in the past—gangs of thieves scoping out the cabins. The neighbor down there had his lawn mower stolen. We all try to keep an eye out. For strange cars, that kind of thing.”

The dog had sniffed out his food, and was attempting to get into the car between his legs. The dirt in the kitchen flashed through his mind, the cartons scattered across the floor. It must have fought its way into the cupboards trying to find something to eat.

Olof grabbed it by the scruff of its neck, making it growl and squirm.

“Is it yours?”

“No, I . . . It was in the middle of the road.”

“Hang on, isn’t that Sven Hagstr?m’s dog?” The man turned around and peered up towards the house, still visible among the trees. “Is he home?”

Olof struggled with the words. The truth. The shower running and running, the pale skin dissolving before his eyes. The key beneath the rock. He cleared his throat and gripped the car door.