Chapter 3

Inga woke up feeling uncomfortable. She was no longer so sure about their trip to the country. She wanted to go, to get out of the city, she really did, but it sounded more than that, and her experience with men in Paris had not been entirely satisfactory. Even Staffan was interested in other things sometimes, his bloody car for one.
The interphone rang. “Hello ... oh ... no, I don’t mind at all ... that’s alright, I’ll be down in an hour then, OK?” That seemed to solve things nicely.
She went and knocked at his door. This time it opened immediately. His smile wavered to match her expression.
“Oh God...” His face! It was Sven, he wanted something and if he didn’t get it he was going to cry or burst into one of his flaming tempers (he wasn’t always sweetness and light). Diversion tactics were needed fast: “Oh, do you realise, I don’t even know your name!”
“Oh, er, no you don’t, do you. My, um, friends call me Xavier.”
“Xavier,” she thought she repeated, “that’s a nice name.”
“No, not Zavier, it’s pronounced Ksavier. And what’s yours? ... Hmm, that’s nice too.”
And then came the embarrassed silence, both waiting for the other to speak. Xavier was the first to get a sentence out. It was short: “Ready?”
“I’m sorry, there’s a problem. My family’s asked me to look after the kids today, they’ve got to...” In fact, she didn’t know what they had to do. The mother didn’t actually say. “Well, I don’t really know, they just said they had to go somewhere.”
The disappointment fell on him like a bucket of mud. She couldn’t come. The excitement collapsed, the plans and fantasies crumbled. He stood there, annihilated by a finality as devastating as it was unreal. But the fact remained: she couldn’t come.
He closed the door, sat in his chair and sulked. He knew something would go wrong. It always happened to him. Self-pity seeped into his ears, poisoning the innocent words that spoiled his day. She didn’t want to go with him anyway, she would have done something otherwise, she would have said no. She was glad. She was probably laughing at him now.
He sat and baked into a stodge of angry dough, turning the wheel around and round. She didn’t like him. She didn’t like him. He sat, stubborn, blocking out all other thoughts. She just didn’t like him. It was an excuse. She was Lying.
And what did she mean: “her family asked her”? He didn’t hear anything. He would have heard if someone’d knocked on her door. He would have heard them talking. She was lying.

The parents were not out long. After sitting in traffic jams for almost an hour, Madame had a head-ache and that was enough. So they came back and Inga was free to go.
She went upstairs and mooched. She felt frustrated. Her tiny room and the constant sound of traffic were beginning to get on her nerves. She had to do something. So she made up her mind. He’s probably harmless enough, she thought. But the door was locked and silent.
She went back to her room.

The biggest change in Inga’s life was not so much being in a foreign country, and not the loneliness either. The first weeks were such a series of minor culture shocks (the filth of French toilets!) she didn’t really have much time to think. The one and only thing that bothered her was Sven. On the phone one day, all she could remember was his thick voice mumbling her name time and time again. And her father kept the worst from her too. Sometimes just thinking about him made her cry.
She’d never been separated from him before, not for a single day. Even when he went into hospital, she was given a bed next to him.
Inga knew that leaving him was going to be difficult, she knew he’d miss her. What she didn’t realise was how much she’d miss him. It was now she began to realise how vitally important he was to her. Everything was so obvious before, so simple, he was just there, he’d always been there. It was as if he was her.
It was a strange relationship. The day he was born, he cried for hours. At the same time, he seemed so weak and fragile, as if he wouldn’t last the next hour. He fed, then jerked away or fell asleep, dribbling milk down his mother’s front, making her more and more irritated. Towards evening, Inga was allowed in. She took one look at the pink, hairy, wrinkly bundle of grimaces and squealed in delight. For a few minutes, she stared at it, mesmerised, then climbed onto the bed and took hold of him as if her mother were just an accessory. He stopped crying. An hour later, guided (prodded) by her little fingers, his lips closed down on his mother’s breast. For the first time, he fed properly, then slept.
His condition wasn’t diagnosed for about a year and a half. His mother sat in the doctor’s surgery and listened to the knives he threw at her: mosaic Down’s syndrome, retarded development, heart disorders and premature dementia, then stood up, went to the toilet and vomited. Inga went wild: “he’s not your baby anyway, he’s mine”. Over the years, against her will, her public shame was slowly beaten down by Inga’s pride, and anyone who laughed at him had her to reckon with first.
Perhaps because she refused to believe he could be retarded, she treated him like a prodigy, talking with him like a slightly elevated other self. When she started going to school, he was the first to hear what she’d done that day. In time, it became a routine, and because she had to do it anyway, and because just listening to her made him happy, he heard her sums, her spelling, and her kings and queens and fairy tails. He smiled, laughed and sometimes burped.
Her homework became his homework. They learned the longest rivers and the names of the seas, the capitals of Europe and countries of Africa. Perhaps he only knew them as a song, but he knew them, and because lists were easier to work on than other things, so did she. But she was always top in geography.
French was almost impossible, but he liked it all the same. Eventually, he found that if she said Monsieur Dupont, she was talking to him, and that if he answered “oui”, he was usually right.
They slept in the same bedroom till she was twelve, and for another year or so crept secretly from one room to the other. Her father deliberately pushed her into other activities. He loved Sven as much as she did, but he loved her too. Dance classes, horse-riding, ice-skating, she liked them all and they lasted all a month at least.
She was fifteen when her first boyfriend stayed overnight. Afterwards, she left him and went and climbed into bed with Sven. She cried and so did he.
It had started.
Boyfriends. As long as they didn’t mind him tagging along. She still remembered Alex. He was the son of boat-people refugees. Gorgeous. Black hair, black eyes and lips like sin. He was another one who talked about longest rivers and the countries of Africa. In six months’ time he was leaving school. He wanted to walk across the Atlas mountains, sleep in a savannah and smell the smell of lions, get a canoe and paddle up the Congo. They ought to go together. She remembered the map on the floor, his eyes, the immensity, the timelessness, Sven.
She didn’t blame him. Deep inside, she knew that if she left she’d never come back. Australia, Borneo, China, the list went on forever.
It was terrible, and she knew it was. Alex was in Colombia now.
A year later, she left school herself. She chose France. One year. One year to get it out of her system.

There was no point moping in her room. She looked at her map of Paris, saw a green splurge and the metro Château de Vincennes, and decided to go out. She put on her anorak and slammed the door. That felt good. Then she went downstairs.
Xavier was standing at the counter of the bar across the road. He saw her close the door and watched her disappear.

A few evenings later, they met again.
“Hello. Listen, I’m sorry about the other day...”
The conversation went badly. Inga was tired and they both kept on misunderstanding each other. He invited her to the cinema and she thought he meant tonight. He suggested a Chinese and she hated it (no, she just ate some with the brats), and so on.
“I’m sorry, I’m really tired…”

The two doors closed behind them. For a while the timer ticked on, then the light went out, plunging the corridor into darkness.

Maybe some other time… ¶ 2:28 AM