- Barnet tycker om mig
It’s been a difficult stretch of months.
A fine understatement, if ever there was one.
See, there was once a house and a life. My life. There was once job in there too. Teaching. And there were days where civilized events took place. Classes, conferences. There was the ordinary: shopping and dinner afterwards. There were uncounted evenings with a book or a bit of television.
It feels now more like Once upon a time. But yet that time once was. And for forty-four years, more or less, it held.
Or. Or was it not then a Once upon a time but instead this now is the Once up on a time? Take all that I had, and know that it is gone, irrevocably gone. That is one thing. But now this? Is this not also a Once upon a time? What else would I call it?
I came here to die. No, that is not true. I came here and then it was time to die. Växjö was the end of the yarn. That figurative and physical arrival of The End. Mortally, my end. For what reason was there to continue? I could hobble into the abyss and nobody would blink. I could leap, fall, run – nobody cared. And nobody should. But instead of any of these noble actions I was pure inaction. I languished. There was not even the will to rip the final tether. I could have chosen to rip myself out of this life. I could have upon any day chosen to step in front a Scania-Vabis. Instead I played the perfect Belacqua. I played Belacqua and let time slide past. Yet I was a Prince of any Belacqua because for me my delayed entrance would not be into Purgatory, no, but straight into the sixth Bolgia where I knew I deserved to obtain special notice. Belacqua had nothing to compare against me.
What was I going on about?
It was an evening where I had been sitting alone outdoors, steeping in my despair. The tree-lined street, Vintervägen, was mine – for whatever that was worth. My plan was to get up in a while and take the 358 somewhere. The slippery ooze of the weak alcohol was allowing me to glide through another evening. A line from a poem I had memorized in primary school occupied my mind and lips.
But then there was a form beside me. A girl. I turned towards her and tried to catch a breath of that young form. I put out my hand and place it on her. It was an inappropriate placement but why not? The little form, though, did not react in fear or any form of agitation. Rather, she pivoted on the bench and faced me directly. I looked away. My hand remained where it was, still inappropriate, but then hers were upon my face, one cradling each side of my head, turning me to look at her. When did I last shave? Her eyes came to be aligned with mine. She had turned my world and in the slow blur of my vision she held directly my view and was my vision.
“You are going to be with me,” she said in a steady voice. That little mouth moved and made those words. The cheeks were so smooth. An angel under dark hair, dressed in an odd choice for a cool evening. She continued to hold my head with both heads and center herself before me.
This where Once upon a time begins. Wind the clock to here and release it into motion.
“I don’t have the kronor,” I said, thinking of what a beauty she was.
She reached down and took the bottle from my other hand. She took my inappropriately placed hand from her thigh. My cheeks renewed themselves with the cool air of the evening; her hands had departed. While I ogled, she continued in purposeful, fluid movement. The little hands held my bottle away from me; the little face sniffed the wine. I watched as she poured my bottle out onto the grass between my knees. Then with in same fluid manner she returned her focus to me. Her hands returned to my face as before and she presented herself again within a mere breath distance before me.
“You don’t understand,” she said in the same steady voice. “You’re going to stop drinking now. You are going to be with me. You are going to help me. I need you. And I’m going to help you.”
As she was making this speech she was also rising from the bench. But such was her size that her face remained directly before mine as she went from sitting to standing. She was Grace brought from fairy into life. Meanwhile my head rocked back as she again released me from her hands. My vision rocked within the fine ooze the wine had supplied.
Reaching out she took up my hand in her little fingers. I felt them across my fingers and I wrapped my thumb in turn over hers.
She gave the gentlest tug and I rose. We swung into a step and we would have looked as to be father and child. With her hand still holding mine, she led and I came along. Yet we were together, in step, moving through the dusk.
“I have a place picked out,” she said. Her voice was as a before: clear and steady. “You are going to go in and pay for it.”
“I don’t have the kronor,” I replied, and realized I had said this now twice and nothing else.
“You will,” she continued in the same steady voice. “You will get a room for yourself and me. We are going to go into the hotel. You are going to ask for the room.”
Why this made sense to me at the time can only be because of my state. My body sloshed along with her lead. We proceeded as she directed. The little black head of hair riding level with my elbow talked and I listened. “She likes me,” was my insane thought. Comfort rose with that and herded off any other measure of sense.
She liked me. Why not, it was Once upon a time. She had come for me and was going to be with me. I was going to be with her; she had said so. This child, an instance of the very same item that had been my personal nemesis, yes, was now the very item leading me. To be liked, by the one thing I had dared to want. To be led by the very thing that I had let lead me before - and then again now. My head sloshed as she walked beside me. Confidence flowed. Her little stride beside my unsteady pace. Her little voice clear and strong. "We are going in here. Remember what I said. You are going to get us a room."
As she spoke we came into the place. I stepped and with that, I stepped into something new. Death was what I thought was left behind. The little form was leading me across the cool faux marble flooring to the reservation desk. Her hand tightened. "She likes me," filled my confident head, "she likes me."
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Eli’s early dialog are quotes taken direct from LTROI. See: Lindqvist, John Ajvide; Ebba Segerberg (2008-10-28). Let the Right One In: A Novel (p. 215). St. Martin's Griffin. Kindle Edition.