The Demon of Dakar - Kjell Eriksson [7]
She drank some of the coffee. She could hear music from Patrik’s room. Eva wished that he had stayed in the kitchen and told her a little more about what Simon’s mother had said. But she sensed there was probably not much more.
Am I worthless? This question came to Eva Willman as she was pulling out a new trash can liner from under the sink. At the bottom of the plastic container there was a decomposing banana peel and a sticky, foul-smelling mass, in whose brown gooey center new life appeared to be flourishing. She took out the new liner, at the same time pulling out the trash can and placing it on the counter. Then she ended up sitting in a crouch, staring into the hole under the sink that the drain pipes disappeared into.
She was about to call out to Patrik, have him come out into the kitchen and show him how disgusting everything became if one did not take care of something as basic as the trash, but why should she bother? She came off as enough of a nag already.
How many times a week did she take out the garbage? How many times did she reach in under the sink, press down the contents, pull up the bag, and tie it?
The sharp smell penetrated her nostrils. This is my smell, she thought, and this is my terrain, drain pipes and a collection of packets of hygiene products and brushes. She reached for the sponge that was tucked in between the pipes and had the urge to bite into it, chew it into green-yellow pieces and savor the taste of cleaning and dishwashing and chores that were threatening to overwhelm her.
There was a splashing sound from inside the pipes. That was probably the upstairs neighbor, a newly arrived Bosnian woman doing the dishes. The sound reminded Eva that she was not alone in the building.
She visualized the apartments as boxes arranged one on top of the other. Five entrances, four stories, and three apartments on each level. Sixty apartments. She knew the names of ten or so renters, nodded in recognition to some fifty people, and did not associate with any of them.
Her legs ached and she sank down on the floor, leaned against the kitchen cabinets, resting there with her elbows on her knees and gently stroking her forehead with the tips of her fingers. Why was she sitting there, nailed to her own kitchen floor as if an invisible hand was pressing her down?
Sometimes she entertained the idea of getting up, taking Hugo and Patrik and walking around to all sixty apartments, ringing the doorbell and saying … What should she say? Would they even open up, as suspicious as everyone had become since the shooting incident down at the school? No one had been hurt, of course, but the sound of the shots had rung out over the entire area.
The woman one floor up had just stepped off the bus with her two children when it happened. She had recognized the sound of gunfire and had picked up the youngest and held the other by the hand and had run straight into the forest, through wilted grass and brush and into the shielding cover of the trees. She had run into the woods as people have always done in uncertain times and was only discovered under a spruce the next morning by an orienteering team from the UIF sport club who were setting up signs. Luckily, it had been a warm night.
It had been in the papers. They had written about the woman’s background. The building complex had its own celebrity.
Would she open the