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Mate Ch. 01

By: risgrynsfisk



Peter

The warriors of the black army advanced on our left flank. They shouted, shook their spears. Behind their first ranks loomed even larger enemies. There was the rumble of cannons and the purple stench of malevolent magic. The initial maneuvering for subtle strategic advantages seemed to be over. Here they came, with flashing swords and yet I was more worried about the right. This was where the stench was coming from. 

I saw the very ground bubble and shift, there would be no solid footing there. I watched the distant figure of the black warlock, general, strategist. He was highly skilled, subtle. But I knew his wiles - I could smell them. I would not stupidly attack to the left where he wanted the battle to move. The swamp to the right would grow if unchecked, would eventually swallow my army. The king, down there in the battlefield, wanted to attack, like they always want. That's why we, me and my colleagues and adversaries, were needed.

My throne grew even higher, I needed a good overview. I opened up on the right, cut away bushes to get free sight, cast a spell of light and heat. The treacherous mud started to harden and the creatures below were confused. They could not bear the light, but if they stayed underground the mud would be so hard they were trapped. I could feel waves of frustration from the black general, they felt like the bitterness of chewing a lemon seed. I relayed his disappointment to my troops and they advanced, cautious but determined. 

I could feel that the enemy was off balance. There were subtle gaps in his defense, gaps that I could slowly widen. It was time to let loose The Amazon, with her long blond hair streaming in the tailwind we now had. Her long silver sword was quick and strong and moved in every direction. The black king looked scared, now - and rightly so. His strategist had tried a cunning trap, but it failed, and now his troops were forced to retreat. Their queen did not have enough space, she fought well but could not use her strength to full advantage.

The black forces did not give up, and they were led by a strategist who was known for his patience. I knew I must not take victory for granted, one small mistake and they would pounce. Slowly we wore them down until their king fell, struck down by his strategist who knew the game was over. We had won. The black forces were conquered again.

This moment was always difficult, especially when I had won. They focus upon the winner, of course. I sat with my eyes shut for a moment like I always do. They accept it now, indeed expect it. When I felt ready I raised my head, carefully not looking at the board. It would make me nauseous if the worlds collided. I looked Iversen in the eyes and we nodded and shook hands. There was applause, always applause. This time it sounded like a train, but a reasonably friendly train with a feel of black fur. I could bear it for a few minutes, comforting myself with the fur.

"Ladies and gentlemen, winner of the game, winner of the tournament...Peter P Hansson of Sweden!" The announcer's voice was saccharine, it left little sticky spots like when you have spilled syrup and step in it. I hoped he would not keep talking. Having a sticky mess in my ears would make it even harder than usual to understand when they interviewed me. A woman in the front row was watching me with what sounded like hunger, a keening bright green noise. I quickly looked away. Too bright. There are few women I can look at with any degree of comfort. It is hard for me with female opponents. I can't look at them, can't taste what they are planning.

The keening from the woman was growing brighter, the green light louder. Are there chess-groupies? I didn't want to find out. I bowed to the audience like I have been taught, waved to everyone except miss Keen and tried to go backstage. Unfortunately, they wanted to interview me on the stage. And unfortunately it was Syrupvoice who was to do the interview. He was going for the freak-angle, of course. Good thing you are expected to be more or less nuts if you're a chess-player. Thank you, Bobby. To my relief, Syrupvoice wanted all the juicy lines for himself, so I got away with doing not much more than smile and nod.

"Congratulations, Peter! How do you feel right now? You must be happy!"

"Yes." Just tired, really.

"Everything worked out the way you planned?"

"Yes." No.

"Though I've been told that you actually plan very little, compared to your colleagues?"

"Yes." That certainly was true.

"But there are other ways you differ from the rest, right?"

"Yes." I tried to hold my breath. His syrup was clogging my lungs.

"You are a synthetic?"

"Yes." The word is synesthetic, but never mind.

"Could you explain to us what that means? Senses mix, right?"

"Yes." Best kind of interviewer - answers his own questions. Less syrup and I'd be happy.

"I've been told that you choose your moves on basis of which move would smell the best?"

"Yes." It's way more complicated than that, but this is what I usually say..

"Well, it seems to work for you. I'm sure your fans in Sweden will be delighted with this victory."

"Yes." All three of them. Swedes generally don't give a fuck about chess. Good thing, too.

That was it. He was happy and I was praised afterwards for my unusually detailed answers. And they think I am the strange one. 

Well, I guess I am a strange one at that. I totally suck at most things. Some think I'm autistic because synesthesia is most common among them, but I'm not. I just suck at being with people. Particularly women. As I said, they are just too bright. Too much. I get blown away and I mean really away away, which is not a good thing at all. I can't handle it. So I usually keep to myself. 

I like to run, but I run at night when the light isn't so loud and there are less people about. I like to cook, too. Chess, well I guess I like it, but I can't take the excitement too often. I very rarely study other players' games, I get too wound up and can't sleep. Come to think of it I like a lot of things. Out-doorsy things like hiking, picking mushrooms and berries. I scuba-dive. I like to work around the house, fix things. All right, so I don't suck at everything.

But I can't relate to people and rarely speak to anyone apart from my psychologist, Ola. Ola is a mossy flannel green, kind of soothing the way a psychologist should be. Him I speak to, once a week. Our relation is safe, with clearly drawn limits and limitations. He wants to cure me from depression. I suppose I also want to be cured from this depression I suppose I have. Ola is also soothing in that he hardly ever says anything unexpected. I guess I'm using him as some kind of father-figure, which that yellow smell of piss on a dead cat that donated my sperm and hung around for a while never was interested in being. Fuck him. Mum...did her best, I suppose.

Running is my other therapy, and I think it is more effective against the depression, really. When I run I feel fine. If I wasn't a professional chess-player I could maybe deliver the morning papers somewhere. Early mornings with hardly any people and lots of exercise. Good to have something to fall back on the day they realize that chess-players don't do anything worth paying for. Useless pastime. Provides me with drama and food on the table, but do I do anything for the general good? No. I'm world-famous, maybe not in Sweden, but in Russia and other countries where they care about chess, but I don't do anything I consider meaningful. If I die tomorrow, no one would miss me.

Look at the last paragraph! I start out telling you about something good, my running, and end up whining. Me in a nutshell.

Magda

I was walking the streets, since I didn't know where to go. Not home, that was the only thing I was absolutely certain of. I would be welcome to several of my friends, but I was too ashamed. It was almost a year now since that bastard hit me the first time. We used to shake our heads, me and my friends. It's just to go, we used to say, me with the rest of them. We couldn't understand how anyone could stay with someone who hits them. None of us said, quite, that they had themselves to blame, but we almost said it

But there I was. After a year of forgiving him and taking him back. With a shiner the size of a frying pan and nowhere to go. I, who had always seen me as a strong, confident woman. Well educated, smart. I was a teacher, never had a problem keeping order in class. Loving parents. Lots of friends. Happy enough with the way I look. I shouldn't be here, like this. It's wrong.

Well, whining about it wouldn't help, I had to get myself together. I was freezing my butt off. I wasn't too far from the Womens` Shelter and I decided to go there. At least I would not be judged. They were used to battered women from all walks of life. That was what I was now, a battered woman. But I felt better, I had decided to take charge of my life again. Now I had hit bottom, and the only way to go was up. Or so I thought.

I heard them before I saw them. They were shouting/singing loudly about their soccer team, one of the Stockholm teams. Their supporters, the Black Army, had a bad reputation. I knew they had played our team today but I didn't know how the game ended. There were two of them, but they sounded like eight. They had the arrogance of people who are used to being feared and like it that way. Rich daddies, from the look of their clothes and hairstyles. Drunk. A very bad combination.

I crossed the street and tried to be discreet about it. Looking scared is bad, but so is getting too close. My heart raced when they crossed the street as well.

"Hey, pretty girl!" one of them yelled. "Where are you going?" I tried to increase my speed without panicking and did not answer. Didn't work.

"We're talking to you! It's bad manners not to answer when spoken to." 

They got closer. I didn't know what to do. Run? Talk politely and hope they just wanted to scare me? I did nothing, I just froze. Fight, flight, play dead - I went for option C. Now they were close enough to inspect me.

"Wow, look at that shiner. This lady likes it rough!"

That was the last thing I needed. I could just as well have had a sign saying "Prey!" One of them shoved me.

"We just wanted to have a little conversation."

"But now you kind of hurt our feelings."

"We don't like that."

They were pushing me backwards, towards a dark area with bushes. I don't know if they intended to rape me, and I will never know, thank God, because now a voice behind me said "Excuse me..."

Peter

I started to prepare dinner, or whatever you call a full meal you eat in the middle of the night. Nights are better, not so stressful. I had a nice steak, the proper hues of deep resounding brownish red. Olive oil spiced up with truffles, a kind but not wimpy blanket to wrap the reds in. Fresh lemon, like trombones but not too loud. My body was buzzing and I had time for a run before the meat was ready to be fried. I don't grill. Hate it. The grill wants all the attention, the frying pan is a team player. It doesn't mess up the chords.

I sniffed my running shoes. The white ones were most eager. I put them on and stood in my garden for a while. I wonder how I managed before, without a garden. In the garden I can calibrate my head, get it used to being outdoors. It was a good night. No wind but cold, a thin drizzle. The streets would be almost empty tonight. 

It was a joy to run. I wished that my whole life could be like that. Running through the beautiful friendly dark, with the comfortably grey smell of moisture. My body was humming with the night air, a meditative chord with the flavor of owls. There were no owls there in the middle of town, but the feeling of owls was not dependent on that. My heartbeat grew and echoed from the houses I passed. A man walking his dog fit right in, the dog loved everyone and wanted to run with me but no. I smelled a rat under a bush and hummed The White Stripes for a while. Birds sleeping. The oboe sound of smoke. 

But now there was a disturbance (in the force, ha ha), a smell of something chemical and poisonous, the sound of bright blue panic. A girl was being pushed towards some bushes by two big men. I had no phone, there was no way of calling for help.

I had imagined situations like this, asked myself what I would do. The answer had been obvious. I didn't see myself as the knight in shining armor, but I could see me sacrificing a knight to save the queen. I had done that many times. I had my strategy worked out. 

"Excuse me..."

"Fuck off!" I had hoped that they would just release her and move on. They did not. On to step two. 

"HELP! HELP! RAPISTS! CALL THE COPS! HELP" 

"Shut up or I'll kick your head off." They were coming for me. Good. The girl was moving away, carefully. Good, good. I felt confident I could outrun them, they were too big and not sober and my body was in the running groove. 

"You mean you'd dare to fight someone who's not a little girl? I don't believe it." Mission accomplished, they were both running towards me, and the girl was running away. I ran with light self-confident strides. I felt good about myself for once, for about five seconds. Then I felt my shoulder explode and I was down. Shit, they were fast. My main feeling was one of chagrin that I apparently was not the runner I thought. The pain didn't matter so much, and then everything was black.

Magda

I fumbled out my phone as I ran. The lady at the other end was friendly and efficient and assured me that the police would be there very soon, there was a car close by. I hid in a dark doorway and watched them kicking him. I felt like the world's greatest coward. It was my fault he was beaten up and I was doing nothing. Please police please police, come come come. The bastards were screaming and grunting and I could hear the sound of their kicks hitting him. He didn't make a sound.

Finally, after five hundred years, they came. Two cars from different directions, dickheads didn't have a chance. I ran to him, one cop checked pulse and breathing and stuff. He was alive, but his face was broken and bloody. He looked like shit and smelled of piss, but my heart grew sad, happy and large when I looked at him. 

An ambulance arrived and he was gone. Dickheads gone too. Just cops left, asking things. When they couldn't think of more questions I moved on to the shelter. I did not think I would be able to sleep with so many thoughts buzzing. Turned out I fell asleep right away, though. 

They were great at the shelter. A volunteer lady took care of me. She discreetly urged me to charge Roger (my asshole ex) with battery and we went to a doctor to get a check-up and take photos. I wanted to visit my smashed-up savior, but that proved to be difficult. I didn't know his name and no one at the hospital wanted to play detective for me. The hospital was large and I didn't know how badly, nor in what way, he was hurt.

There were many things I didn't know. Like where to live. But I could spend a few nights at the shelter, and I suppose I could crash at some friends' place. I was not sitting in the lake, as the saying goes in Sweden. I wanted to get my stuff from Rogers' flat, though, the faster the better. And yes, it is his flat, and he can bloody well have it.

Next day there was a small article in the paper about my savior. Apparently they still did not know who he was. He was still unconscious, no one had reported anyone as missing and he had carried nothing when jogging. To make identification even harder, he was too badly beat up to be easily recognizable. They did not want to publish a picture. But they urged everyone who had any idea of who the mystery hero could be to contact the police.

I had to find him!

Peter

The first thing to wake up was my sense of smell. It's supposed to be the most unintellectual, most primordeal sense, with direct connections to parts of the brain involved in fear and survival. I knew right away I was somewhere unfamiliar. I hid as far into my cave I could come, tasting and listening to the small tendrils of air that reached me. There was a strong feeling of white stainless shutters. A faint purple whiff of rotting humans behind the shutters. That was a smell I had felt before and for a moment I panicked, screaming in my head without a sound. But there was no hostility to this purpleness, there was rot but it was not malevolent. The shutters tried to block the purple. Good luck with that, I had tried for eighteen years. 

The white wasn't the unbearable kind. It meant well although it was too bright, as usual. There was a lot of pain, but pain has never bothered me all that much. It's uncomplicated. It is what it is, and it is not important. By now I had deduced I was in the hospital. I was still a little fuzzy about what had happened to me, but I was pretty sure I was not in danger now. I dared to listen and my head filled with color. Almost all colors were hospital pale. Some machine watched over me, it muttered a pale blue lullaby, wanting me to keep still. There were tubes going into me and out of me, and they, too, meant well. This machinery I was hooked up to was very happy with itself, they felt they were doing something important. Keeping me alive. I was touched.

Someone was snoring softly. There was a delightful dark orange hue to the snores, no hospital paleness there. I had to smile and I had to open my eyes to see who the cute snoring belonged to. The light was out, for which I was grateful, but there was enough for me to see her. I was happy that she slept since I could look at her, even study her face. She smelled like worry and sadness but no bitterness. I wished I could bear my sadness with as much grace. I had no idea who she was. Hardly hospital staff - no paleness and her own clothes. She smelled nice like a small simple melody, Satie but softer. Saties music is mineral, hers was organic but not chaotic. Jan Johansson! She slept in an armchair, wrapped in a pale yellow hospital blanket. I had a one-bed room, (thank God) which meant that cutesnore was here for me. Strange.

I must have made a sound, since she opened her eyes like you do when you hear a sound and not just open them anyway. 

"You're awake!" she said.

Magda

It was my third day in the armchair. I had told some friends about it all. They were not at all as judgmental as I had feared. At least not of me. They were really angry with Roger, though. My friend Bettan and her boyfriend Erik had gotten my stuff from Roger without any problems, possibly because Erik is gigantic and very good at looking mean when it suits him. Erik had paid him a visit and told him that he expected my things to be neatly packed in exactly 24 hours. They would then fetch it all and when I was happy that everything was there he would get the key back. If I was not happy he could expect another visit at any time. 

It was all there, he got his key and I was well rid of him. I still hadn't got a place to live, but right now I was living in this armchair anyway. I was on sick leave. No way I'd face my class with a black eye bigger than the rest of my face. Here at the hospital hardly anyone gave me a second glance.

It took quite a bit of arguing to get to see him, whoever he is. There still had been no one to visit him, no one seemed to have missed him. Finally I was admitted to his room, since there was no one else and I at least had some connection to him, being his savee. Once there I simply refused to leave. One nurse went on about visiting hours and seemed ready to summon a guard, but the doctor was nice about it and let me stay on the condition that I would not cause any trouble. I promised to leave the room when told, not disturb the staff and not pee on the floor which won me these three days of boredom.


Mate Ch. 01



Boredom can be good, though. It left me plenty of time to think. This thing with Roger for instance. I felt that I understood now how he got to me. I read somewhere that we never really understand why we do what we do, that we are more complicated than any explanation. But it also said that this does not mean that our explanations are unnecessary. They give us working models that guide us in the future, and they need not be entirely true to be helpful.

Back to the Roger thing. I could see that I had made him my project. I knew that he was fucked up and I wanted to fix that. Fixing people was my fix. And I hated to fail. Breaking up with Roger was admitting failure and he knew it. I don't know if he knew that he knew it, but he did. This was my weak spot and he used it.

So. What to do now? I didn't really want to stop making people feel better. Like, when I had a problem kid in my class, I'd bust my ass to make it work. And it did! Friends? No problems there. They often called me if they had a problem and I could call them right back. Except I didn't when I really had a problem. Shit. Well, at least I let Bettan and Erik help me now.

Boyfriends, though. Men. Lousy track record there. I realized that I had only fallen for boys/men who were more or less fucked up. And egocentric assholes, too. I didn't mind fucked up, really. Fucked up was nice and safe. But egocentric I could do without. I used to watch my savior and fantasize about how he would be fucked up just right. The fact that no one came to visit him must mean he was lonely. The fact that he interceded for me, in spite of being so obviously outgunned, meant that him being an asshole was very unlikely. I wanted to take care of him so much it hurt. Part was paying back, I was not used to owe someone and I didn't like it. Part was this crush I couldn't deny, and my imagination went where my intellect would not. 

I took a nap. That was one of the few things I could do there. I slept, read books, thought and ate chocolate. I drifted off and had a dream, it was in black and white and seemed to be set in America in the fifties. I was standing outside a nice house with three cute kids. Two of them hugged a big, happy dog. The third was triumphantly holding up a big shiny toaster for some reason. We were all looking at my mystery savior, dressed in suit, tie and hat. He was carrying a briefcase and walked towards us with confident strides, from his big black American car. He was mobbed by kids and dog and waded through them towards me, his beloved.

"It's all because of you, honey!" he said. "I could never have done it without you!"

I remember feeling a little embarrassed even while dreaming. This was not a dream worthy of a modern woman like me. But dreams are dreams and I intended to enjoy it.

"Coffee, dear?" I suddenly had a coffeepot and a mug.

"Thanks honey, no one makes coffee like you!"

At this stage of my dream I heard a noise. A new noise, from close by. I woke up, and he was looking at me.

"You're awake!"

He closed his eyes again, as though blinded by the light in spite of the room being almost dark. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but all that came out was the same noise as before, some kind of grunt. 

"They have told me to summon them if you wake up." I said, pushing the button. "I'm Magdalena. My friends call me Magda. I hope you will be my friend."

Peter

The woman said she wanted to be my friend. This was very confusing. My thoughts always became more complicated when I was upset or confused. They took on stronger colors, louder sound, more pervasive smells. It took a lot of work to achieve harmony from the discordant chords. Most of the time I could avoid confusion because I didn't care if I understood or not. But now I wanted to understand. Goodorange cutesnore wanted to be my friend and I could tell she meant it. But why? I had never had a friend before. Could I be a friend to her? Probably not, I was sure that being a good friend took a lot of practice, especially for someone like me.

A hospital-pale smelling nurse came in. She asked goodorange Magda some questions I didn't have the presence to understand, then she spoke to me. I didn't understand this, either, but I opened half an eye and tried to speak. I just made that little penguin fart sound which seemed to be all I could say today. 

"Don't try to speak yet." She said. I was doubly relieved; I understood and I didn't have to worry about answering. In my relief I missed the next thing she said and then she left. Magda moved her bluewhistling armchair up close. She smelled even better when close, which is unusual. She took my hand. This kicked off a brass-section, muted. Good muted.

"If you cannot speak, maybe we could make a yes or no kind of communication. You know, one squeeze for yes, two for no? Ok?"

I squeezed once. Anything else would have been impolite, and with her I actually wanted to communicate, especially if communication meant her holding my hand.

"Is it ok that I hold your hand?"

"Yes." 

"Do you remember me?" I had met her?

"No."

"Do you remember what happened? Why you are here?"

"No."

"I was attacked. You saved me. You are a hero. My hero." Wow. I had never been a hero before, except in my games. There I do heroic things all the time, but it's not real and no one ever understands the drama and the hero part. I loved the idea of having done something heroic in real life. 

"You made them let go of me. They attacked you instead. You tried to run but they caught you. I didn't dare to do anything else than call for help. I'm sorry." They caught me? Shit that was depressing. I thought that I was a good runner.

Now the nurse returned, in the wake of a big doctor and a small subservient doctor. Big doctor gave me a big smile. Walrus, walrus, walrus I kept thinking and got caught up in wondering why walrus, walrus he did not have a big mustache or giant canines walrus walrus walrus and there was nothing Beatles about him but possibly a smell of salt and sea and cold. Fat enough for walrus walrus and now he stopped talking and I realized that he had told me about what was wrong with me and I had missed it. Shit. Walrus.

Magda told them about our very clever method of communication and doctor Walrus smiled again.

"Excellent! I'm sure you still have a lot of questions. We have some questions too. I will leave doctor Eriksson with you." Exit big doctor and all thoughts of the sea. Subdoctor was paler than hospital pale and spoke in a low voice. Good. He smelled like spaghetti with no salt. He asked me if I had understood everything big doctor had told me.

"No."

"Any particular questions?"

"No."

"Shall I just tell you again, step by step, until it is all clear?"

"Yes." This was just what I needed in life in general - someone who explained everything step by step until I understood. Magda squeezed my hand in a comforting way, which almost made me cry. No one had done that before and my tide of gratitude for the squeeze and my injuries made me miss the first part of subdoctor's explanation.

"...but these traumas to the head seems not to have done any permanent damage. With me so far?"

"Yes." Small fib there.

"There is no intercranial bleeding . Concussion, yes, but there should be no serious after-effects. Possibly a higher tendency for headaches. Ok?"

"Yes."

"The blows or kicks to your neck were more serious. Your windpipe was damaged, but we were able to fix it. This is why you cannot speak yet. It should work itself out when the swelling goes down. Ok?"

"Yes." This conversation reminded me of my interview with Syrupvoice. It would have worked out just as well with this method but I would not have liked the stickiness of holding his hand. Thinking of him made my lungs clog up and I had to cough. Shit that hurt more than I was prepared for.

"I hope you are not in too much pain. We administer a painkiller with that fluid. If it gets too bad there is room to increase the dosage a little. You want that?"

"No."

"You have a broken wishbone and three fractured ribs. Painful, but not dangerous. Ok?"

"Yes."

"There is a problem of an unusual kind." he then said. "We do not know your name." He then spoke to Magda. "If you can find out we would be grateful. Screws up the administration, you know."

He left, as did the nurse.

Magda felt much less sad than before. I took a deep breath and wrapped myself in Magda goodorange and in the wonderful thought of being her hero. No more syrup or big doctor brine. 

Magda

I loved his eyes. They were very expressive. I could read joy, sadness, wistfulness and wry humor come and go while the doctor spoke. I wished he'd look at me, but he didn't. He didn't even look at me when the others had left. He just took a deep breath and closed his eyes. 

"Are you too tired to talk now? If talk is the right..."

"No."

"Shall we start with the name...you do remember your name?"

Small smile. "Yes."

"I'll just run through the alphabet. Give me a squeeze when we come to the first letter of your first name." The answer was P, and Peter was my third guess. Last name, H. Hansson was my first guess, it's a common name in Sweden.

"So Peter Hansson. I guess they want your numbers too." In Sweden everyone has a personal number you get when you 're born. It follows you through life and you can't communicate with any kind of authorities without stating your number. He squeezed me 8-7-1 times, then opened his hand.

"You want to stop?"

"No."

"Ah - that was a zero?"

"Yes." So - 8710 He went on. 1-1-6-6-1-8

"Great. So now I guess you officially exist. Twenty eight years old. I'm twenty six. Eeh, I'm a little concerned that no one has missed you,,,"

"No."

"You are not concerned?"

"No."

"So, no one has missed you...wait, I can't frame the question like that, your answer would be unclear."

"Yes." An approving little smile. 

"Do you think anyone has missed you?"

"Yes."

"But you are not concerned?"

"No." This gave me some pause. He did not care if he was missed and people were worried? I started to ask about family and friends. He said he had neither. I got a yes that the people missing him had something to do with his work. I then tried to find out what he did for a living. There are parlor games like that, you shall find something out and they can only answer yes or no. I'm good at that sort of thing, but this one was hopeless. He was not employed, but did not have his own company. Yes to free-lance, but free-lance what? Not consultant, not architect, not artist. Not athlete or journalist or computer guy. Not criminal, coach, shrink, archeologist or spy. I gave up and he just smiled. His childish pleasure at my failing to guess was heart-warming.

I asked if he wanted me to tell him about whom I was and he squeezed that he did. So I told him. I told him about things that had made me happy, like getting my dog when I was twelve and the joy of acting. And I told him about things that made me sad, like when that dog died, as dogs will. And about my brother...

I told him about my job and that I tried to paint now that I didn't have the time for theater any more. I told him about Roger and my walk in the rain and those bastards who attacked me and how brave he had been and about Bettan and Erik and how I suppose I could sleep at their place for a while once he kicked me out from his armchair. At that stage he held up his hand meaning stop. I shut up. No wonder he was tired. He just lay there with eyes closed. He didn't let go of my hand, which I liked, although it was real uncomfortable after a while. I started to drift off again.

Peter

She began to talk about herself. I loved it. I was wrapped in her smell, wrapped in her voice. And I was holding her hand. It was like hugging the dog when I was little, but even better. Magda also had a dog, didn't she say that? I was pretty sure she did. There was so much information. Like the faint yellow swell of her sweat and the little (also yellow) sounds from her stomach. I liked both, they made the chords that was her richer and closer. I still couldn't look her in the face which, for once, bothered me. I heard her say she had nowhere to live, and had to silence her. I needed to think about this. Very carefully.

Was it worth the risk? I risked losing everything that made my life bearable - my house and my solitude. On the other hand there was a chance that my life would be more than bearable. Which, a lot of the time, it wasn't. I was sure I was in love with her, I couldn't hold anybody's hand the way I held hers if love wasn't involved somehow. Another problem was, how would I survive when she left me? To make someone really miserable, give them something they desperately want and then take it away. Much worse than never having had it.

People came in and started talking. I pretended to sleep. Then I didn't pretend.

Magda

I had given his name and number to the nurses, of course, and here they came, all excited. Apparently he was famous. I vaguely remembered a series of articles about people from our city who were world famous but unknown to most. A taxidermist, a poker-player, an authority on mushrooms. And Peter. They also said that he had finally been missed. He should have been in Rome this morning, for a tournament. Peter was asleep, so they left pretty soon. 

It was nice and peaceful when they left. I googled Peter on my cell. Wow! That's what I call fucked up! And brave and sweet and needing my protection. I was in love. Or something. He held my hand in his sleep like a trusting child and I wanted to save him now. Save him, marry him, breed with him and buy a god damn toaster with him.

I found the article about him. They had met in his garden, which was lovely. They talked about the garden and synesthesia, but very little about chess. Apparently he never studied or practiced chess. He just played, and made whatever moves felt right. He looked nice on the photos, a little shy but not scared. There was no mention of family or girlfriends. Night slowly descended. Peter slept. I dozed in the armchair.

The head honcho doctor made his entrance early next day. He pronounced Peter fit to be freed from all tubes and allowed to get up and walk. It was good if he could eat, and excreting was mandatory before going home. Now that Peter could sit up properly, and even do a walkabout to the nurses office and back, we could arrange for more efficient ways of communication. I had my smallest laptop with me. He still didn't look at me, other than quick peeks. I figured he was shy. So was I, suddenly.

Peter

She had a laptop. It crackled like small small small popcorn. She wanted me to write with it or on it or whatever. Prepositions are tricky in a second language. I would have preferred to keep on with the holding hands method, but all right. I didn't know what to say, didn't want to make a bad impression. What did normal people talk about. The weather? That would be absurd. I tried to tell myself that I wasn't a normal person. I was a hero and a hero speaks about whatever he wants. 

"Did you sleep well in that chair?" I asked.

"No, I can't say I did. But I wanted to be with you."

"When you didn't know who I was. You know now and know what I am."

"Can you tell me about this synesthetic thing?"

"First, remember that to me the way I am is normal, ok. Took me a long time to figure out that I saw, heard, smelt and tasted things differently than others. Touch, not so much. Apparently most synesthetics have a less complicated version of it than me. They may get a color to a sound or something. I get chords."

"Many sounds?"

"Chords of different senses, I meet someone and every impression of the person has a sound, a smell, a color and so on. If these chords are not in harmony it gets...stressful. And there are many chords to a person."

"Sounds complicated."

"Yes, that's why I mostly keep to myself. It's too much information. I still can't look at your face. It's glorious, but too much. I hope I will get used to it."

"Me too. What are my chords like?"

"I really like them. The dominant color is goodorange, earthy but not heavy. Small sour spots like lemon candy, sound of small waves clucking a calm summers day. Sweetness which is not cloying. And more, of course. But not a single false chord yet."

One of the nurses entered, carrying a tray. It smelled like a sad waste of what could have been food, a bad kind of grey. But I was hungry. Big time hungry. I needed to eat. If I concentrate I can shut off most of the sensory information for a little while. I did and quickly ate what called itself fish. Afterwards I was tired. I lay down to sleep in spite of some worry that I had eaten too fast. I didn't want to puke on her shoes or something. Before closing my eyes I typed:

"You can live in my house. If you want."

Magda

I did want. I wanted to live in his house. I wanted to know more! I wanted to strangle him. I wanted something to eat, which was the only one of my current desires I could satisfy. And coffee!

Back in my chair, sipping my third cup of coffee, I no longer wanted to strangle him. Quite. I googled away, while waiting for him to wake up. He was listed, and I found his house on Google Earth. Big city-house, pale green. I already knew he had a beautiful garden. Hey, three mailboxes outside the house, ought to be three apartments, then. But I wanted to know more, I needed to know more. I coughed. No reaction. I coughed very loudly. He just kept on sleeping. This was silly. He needed his sleep and I was being childish. Patience patience patience, wake up you bastard!

Well, eventually he did wake up. He was apprehensive that his offer had offended me and he was relieved that I was genuinely interested. Yes, there were three apartments, but he had never had any tenants because it was hard for him to be close to people. He felt that it would work out with me. He apologized for falling asleep. Apparently that was something he often did when stressed out and offering me to live in his house was extreme social risk-taking to him. Quite the adrenaline junky.

He had a few absolute rules. No rap or hip-hop. No boiling cabbage. No moving things around in the garden or in his part of the house. These were things that would disturb the chords too much. Oh, and I was not to die, that was an absolute no-no. I could live with these rules and didn't mind living forever. We had a fierce battle about the rent, though. He didn't want any, which was unacceptable to me. I managed to negotiate up to about half of what he could have gotten for the flat, which was an acceptable compromise to both. 

I felt happy. I was rid of Roger and I had somewhere to go. And with Peter in my life in some way. If nothing else we'd be close neighbors. Now, in the beginning he would need my help - you try to put on a sweater with a wishbone and three ribs broken. I hoped for more, of course, but knew I must take it slow. He still couldn't look at me, but he seemed willing to let me into his life. He was just not used to closeness. 

Peter

I felt happy. I would have Magda in my life in some way. If nothing else we'd be close neighbors. I was pretty sure that she would help me at first, when I needed it. I hoped for more, of course, but I had to be careful and not ruin everything. She seemed willing to let me into her life, and she was used to closeness. I would let her take the lead.



Mate Ch. 02



Magda

Peter was nervous and embarrassed. Nervous about showing me his house, embarrassed about not paying for the taxi which had just thrown us up right next to three certain mailboxes of internet fame. He hadn´t even thought about money, that the taxi had to be paid and that he had no money with him, until now. I liked it so much I was worried. What if I like his being helpless so much that I make him helpless? He has managed his life without me this far, remember that! 

He apologized that his garden looked bad which I assure you all Swedish gardens do in early December. Unless there´s snow, and there wasn´t. His left arm was in a sling, all the broken bones were on the left side. The swellings in his face had gone down a bit but he had to be in quite a bit of pain. He never complained, though, and I sometimes felt bad about forgetting that he was hurting.

He showed me where he had hid his key that night he went running. Very clever, but I won´t tell you where. Classified information. 

"Do you want to see my place or your flat first?" he asked. He still could not talk. He still wrote down everything on my little laptop.

"Your place." Of course I was curious about my flat, but I was even more curious about how Peter lived. My imagination had come up with a lot of different scenarios, from a total mess to clinically stark. The only thing that would surprise me was a very ordinary IKEA-catalogue home.

"I have had this house for five years," he said. "You are my first visitor." Behind the front door was a stairway. Blue, all shades of blue. Some stuffed birds. I thought about that world-famously unknown taxidermist and wondered if it was his work. A door to the right. 

"That´s the bad flat," he said. "The floor is terribly ugly. I never go there." Next door was his apartment. The hall was a nondescript beige. 

"I just pass through this area," he said. "It must not be too loud. The rooms can make their statements, but not the hall. And the kitchen...I must be able to cook all sorts of food there." The kitchen was to the right. It was homey, somewhat old-fashioned and not loud. Peter was unexpectedly loud, though. He made an AAAH-sound (in spite of his being unable to speak) and stared at something wrapped in plastic in the kitchen sink. He backed off, typing furiously;

"Please, please throw it away. It must have rotted now. Shit, I forgot. Please." Except he didn´t bother about punctuation, being upset. I corrected it afterwards. Can´t help it, teacher thing.

It was a slab of meat, and I suppose it had gone bad after several days of room temperature. I didn´t feel any bad smell, though, but obviously Peter did. I took out the meat and threw it in the garbage bin while Peter opened all windows. 

"I could stand the corruption at the hospital because of the white shutters, but this was too much." he had written. White shutters?

"I´m so happy you were with me." he went on, "That would have been hard for me to deal with on my own." We had moved on to the next room, the one straight ahead from his entrance door. This room was full of fish tanks, and there was a waterbed in the middle of the room. 

"Sometimes I like to sleep under the water," he said, "I love snorkeling and diving."

"Great," I said, "I always wanted to try that."

All his rooms made statements, as he said. They had a definite mood and he chose where to eat or sleep or listen to music or read or just hang around according to what he (for instance) would eat and his current mood. All this to make his chords harmonize and be bearable. The big room to the left was dominated by plants. Some furniture, but mainly plants. And air. A back door to a porch and his garden. 

Upstairs he had a black room with hardly any light, like a soft nest and a hard room, black and metallic, with a drum kit. The last room was on old-fashioned library with old armchairs, dark brown furniture and the smell of old books. I loved it! There were beds in all the rooms except the library, including his glassed-in porch. There were several separate sections in the garden too, all with their own moods.

Peter

I felt ridiculously happy showing Magda around. She got it! And she meshed with every room, in different ways. I wanted to hug her, lick her face like a happy puppy. But all I did was to grin like an idiot and my throat made happy idiot-sounds I couldn´t stop. 

"Time to look at your flat." I wrote. It was on the top floor too, next to the hard room. She looked like a bird-lady which inspects the nest a lovesick male has built, him hoping it is grand enough for her to move in. I did the male-bird part, hovering worriedly and pointing out the best features. There was some furniture and other things that didn´t fit in any of my rooms but I hadn´t wanted to throw away. First I was worried that she´d think it was messy but she asked if it was possible to loan some of the stuff, she didn´t have much.

"That means you want to live here!"

"Of course I do."

Sometimes it was very frustrating to not be able to talk. Now it was bloody frustrating to not be able to scream. I went to the hard room and played my drums (with one arm) for a while. Happy. Loud. Cinnamon.

Magda

He was just too cute when he showed off his rooms. Once he dared to believe that I loved the concept and how he had made it happen he was so heart-warmingly joyous I wanted to kiss him. I could see he worried that I wouldn´t like the flat, but what was there not to like? The overall impression was that of his kitchen - homey, slightly old-fashioned, neutral in a good way. A nice kitchen, a bedroom overlooking what he said was the prettiest part of the garden and a big living-room with a fireplace. In a good part of town. Dirt cheap. With Peter in the same house. Of course of course of course I wanted to live there.

Peter disappeared, and the sound of drums filled the house. He couldn´t play properly with all those broken bones, but he sure could make a lot of noise. He was good! I wished I played an instrument, but I didn´t. He was Keith Moon-furious in there but happy, which Keith never was. I liked it. I liked everything except that I was hungry. I had eaten like crap the last few days. I wanted to eat and I wanted to sleep. In a bed, not a chair, thank you. I had optimistically gotten rid of my own bed when I moved in with Roger, since we were supposed to live happily ever after. There were two beds in the flat, though, one too soft but the other one just fine. I wanted it, but I wanted food first. 

"Feed me!" I sounded like Little Shop of Horrors and Peter was all contrite. He apologized for his thoughtlessness in not being able to read my thoughts and he apologized that he didn´t have anything good to feed me with. This while he in no time whipped out a pasta dish with a fantastic salmon sauce. I was allowed to help with tasks that were hard to do with one hand, like chopping onions. 

He made a fuss about what sheets I would harmonize the best with. He ended up picking some brown sheets which apparently would go well with my dominant orange and create a chord conductive to a good night´s sleep. They did, I guess. I´m usually an early riser but now I didn´t wake up until eleven.

Peter

How is it possible to sleep that long? She slept and slept and slept. I wanted to go in there and look at her, but I knew I must not, that would be creepy. I kept reminding myself that it was her flat, and that I could not just go in there. I had woken very early, excited like a kid on Christmas eve - which is when the gifts are exchanged in Sweden. Every day with her was a gift and I wanted to open my present as soon as possible.

While waiting I took care of my poor plants. Good thing it was this time of year. Six days with no water would have been worse in the summer, when they were much thirstier. But they were gloomy. They are always depressed in winter. I like the dark but they don´t, and this time of year there was about six hours of daylight. If you had a daytime job you only saw the light of day through the windows at work. As did my plants, sighing wistfully while doing their job of sending me smells and color. In summer I let them come out and play now and then but now it´s too cold.

Work. Magda would be back at work on Sunday. Gave me quite a start when I realized she was a teacher. School wasn´t the happiest time of my life. I suppose I can´t blame the teachers for not understanding me. No one did, after all, including me. But I wished that some of my teachers had been less certain about their erroneous explanations - like I was deliberately wrong-headed, stupid or acting the fool to get attention. But I was sure that Magda was not like that.

So. Plants taken care of. She still slept. I went down in the basement to clean the laundry-room. Check, as good as I can get it with one arm. Still no Magda. I went to the neighborhood bakery, it won´t do with stale bread for breakfast. She slept.

"Shit!" I said. Yes - I said it. Maybe I could speak again. I started to try out different sounds. Some vowels were easier than others, but I could speak after a fashion. It was still slow and clumsy, but better than writing. Now, at last, Magda turned up.

"Good morning." I said proudly. She was even more beautiful when rested. There was a feel of a field of oats, golden and rippling in the wind which sounds hyper-corny but that´s not my fault. The black eye was almost not noticeable now. At least not in the two seconds I managed to look at her before looking away. Man, she was bright.

"Hey, he speaks!" she said. "Don´t overdo it, remember?"

"Right." I said. I wonder if she believed me when I said that I remembered. I didn´t remember getting any instructions whatsoever. 

Breakfast was great. Then she called her friends and they spoke about her things, which they would bring. Wow, two more people visiting my house. I hoped I would like them. I hoped they would like me. New hopes. Come to think of it I never used to hope for anything. I had always known that being alone was not really what I wanted, just the best I could realistically expect. Better than being confused, overwhelmed and misunderstood.

Magda

I could tell he was nervous about Bettan and Erik coming over. I tried to calm him down by telling them they were friendly, non-judgemental, played in a band, she was a teacher he was an engineer, no kids but two dogs. But I knew that other things were the important ones for him, and I could tell him nothing about their chords. We carried stuff I didn´t want from my flat to the attic, which looked like there should live owls there. Every time we walked up the stairs to the attic he hummed "Working in the Coalmine" quietly to himself. The first two times I reminded him of the doctor´s orders, but he promptly forgot. Apparently that song was needed to balance the chords up there.

We needed to shop for food. I had nothing and Peter very little. None of us had a car and Peter didn´t drive. He said it would be dangerous since he was so easily distracted. I could see he was practicing looking at me. I pretended I didn´t notice but it was difficult not to smile. Peter usually ordered on the net and had it delivered. It felt a bit like cheating, but there were more important matters to consider. Like Peter.

I had become bold enough to touch him now, small touches on his arm. We were sitting on a big soft couch in the soft nestroom, sipping tea. I maneuvered closer, took his hand, lay my head on his shoulder.

Peter

I have never in my entire life felt so close to someone. Possibly with my mother early early before my memories began. Certainly not after. The chords were larger and more majestic than what was really fitting for the nest. But at the same time there was a soft intimacy that no other room could have harmonized with. The discordance wasn´t unpleasant, though. It had the feel of the eagerness of spring and I knew I was growing. 

Her body touched mine, her hip soft firm saffron warmth. I could tell that she really wanted to touch me. She liked it. I didn´t understand why but she did and this new hope grew with a larger pain and maybe I would dare to put my arm around her shoulder. I could feel the smell of the wonderfulness of holding her. There was fear holding me back, though, a mangrove swamp of insecurities gathered through a lifetime of being the freak and then the doorbell rang. Rats. 

Bettan and Erik were nice people the way labs are nice dogs. They were large, loud and enthusiastic. I liked them but I knew right away they must never enter my apartment. I didn´t mind them in the building, though. Bettan gave me a hug right away, which was another first for me. In her labby enthusiasm she may have hugged me a little bit harder than my ribs liked, but never mind. Skating and licorice came to mind. 

Erik was huge. If he had been the one to confront Magda´s attackers they would have ran and I would be here by myself with ribs intact but a broken life. I had a moment of intense self-pity and had to laugh. I was so used to feel sorry for myself that when I was happy I was feeling sorry for how sad I would have been if I wasn´t happy. Sometimes you have to be creative to be miserable. Erik did not hug me, for which I was grateful. They both thanked me over and over for saving Magda. After a while I felt like crying because I was so overwhelmed by knowing someone as wonderful as myself. New feelings, all the time.

We had coffee. They talked more than I thought possible, sometimes all three spoke at once. I was distracted a lot of the time, but they loved the flat, that much I understood. There was nothing stressful about their talktalk, I didn´t feel like I suddenly would get an exam on what someone had said. I was thinking about how Magda touched my arm before, small intimate touches like a friendly squirrel sometimes not there and you could watch the squirrel-touch-feeling move around explore the room and then it would be back. Soft and furry.

Their talk was like an intricate jazz-improvisation where you know that you miss most of what is going on but it doesn´t matter. You pick up a theme or a phrase and follow that like you follow a path in the forest when you know it is going nowhere and that´s exactly where you want to go. Suddenly they stopped their talktalk jam and they all looked at me. Oh-oh. Ominous oboe melody.

"I knew you were not listening," Magda said with a great big smile. Oboe out. "I was just wondering if you wanted to come along and meet my parents."

"What!" Sheer terror shot through me. "Sure." Growing, growing, growing. Was that a song? No, not growing, rolling. Or bowling, I once heard a bowling-song using that melody with the message that peace on Earth could be found if we all bowled together like a big happy family. "Why?"

"To get my stuff from their garage." Magda said. She didn´t sound irritated , though I´m sure she had told me before. She didn´t smell irritated either, which was harder to fake. She was so perfect. I wish I could write music, not just hear it. A Magda concert the way I hear her would be magnificent.

"Sure." I said again. "But I won´t do much good when it comes to carrying things. Or driving. Or talking to your parents."

"I just want them to meet you." She said. "They want to thank you. And don´t worry about talking, they know you´re not supposed to talk very much" This hero thing could become addictive. I loved being praised for something I was proud of. The only thing I´ve been praised for before was playing chess and that´s like praising a tall guy because he can reach the top-shelf. Just an accident of birth.

They sure wanted to thank me. For saving her, for giving her a place to live, for making her smile, for getting her away from Roger. 

"You´re welcome" I said. "No problem. My pleasure. By all means." Like most people they were overwhelming but I felt (and smelt) they were to be trusted and just relaxed. It was like being carried down a river and there´s rapids but you trust the river not to bash you into a rock. They didn´t. The car was loaded rapidly, what with Erik being able to carry a couch under each arm. Then we had coffee again. This time it was even more complicated, a five-voice jam.

Magda

Belongings in place, friends gone home. We needed food. I ordered pizza and beer and Peter was fine with that. He wanted me to decide what room and what music would go well with pizza and beer. I chose Christmas carols in the library and he giggled for ten minutes. Again, he was so cute I wanted to kiss him.

"Peter," I said. "Right now you are so incredibly cute I want to kiss you. In fact, I am going to kiss you."

So I did. That first kiss was tentative, slow, light. Our lips barely touched. His eyes were closed - he still had problems looking at my face. He was trembling. I was trembling. We barely touched, and yet this was the most emotionally intense kiss of my entire life. It lingered, grew, waned, ended.

We sat staring at our half-eaten pizzas - the world´s most unromantic food. Peter had tears in his eyes. "Wow." he said. "You know, I could die now."

"Don´t you dare. I do intend to kiss you again. Do you have a problem with that?"

"None whatsoever." He rose. "But now I must sleep. In the nest. I have grown enough today, now it´s regression time."

I was not tired. I unpacked stuff and did what I could to turn my home into my home. I was humming carols and smiling about the kiss. I was sure he wanted me and I was sure I wanted him. He would not get away now. When I eventually fell asleep I think I dreamed about Peter again, but a rather meatier dream this time. Heat but no toaster. 

Sunday morning. I think we woke up reasonably at the same time. I gave Peter a present for our first anniversary, since that night we had been aware of each other´s existence for a week. He sniffed the present. "Orange!" he said happily, and opened up to find a stuffed white rabbit. He agreed it was white, but it smelled orange. Orange like me, he knew right away it was one of my old toys. 

"To help you with your regression when needed," I said. "There´s a whole lot of growing ahead of you. And me, come to think of it."

Peter

That kiss, that rabbit, that extraordinary woman. That breakfast. Everything was charged with John-Philip Sousa exuberance. The breakfast milk was more like my idea of champagne (never had it, but I still have a definite idea of what it´s like) than its usual steady plod. The coffee was like coffee in commercials, where people always look like they come in their pants (another thing I´ve never done but have ideas about) when they drink it. We were in the plant room and even they looked happy.

"We will kiss a lot more today." she said. More trombones to the Sousa march. There was a new delightful smell to her, animal but sweet, with a hint of mustard. She wanted to kiss me, then show me how her flat looked now. This kiss was deeper, firmer, a strong yellow rather than pink.

I think it went on for a long time: my dick had the time to wake up and make its presence known. I think I get horny in a reasonably normal way. I´ve got a computer, I watch porn, I jerk off. But not until now have I had the hope that sex actually is something that might happen to me. Before Magda I thought that my only options were the internet or a prostitute, and that is straight out. As I said, new hopes these days.

A lot had happened in her flat. Had she slept at all?

"I´m in love with a crazy cat lady," I said. 

"An allergic crazy cat lady." There were cats everywhere, china cats, glass cats, cat pictures and a great big concrete cat on the floor. "And I love you too, of course."

Back to the drums, shouting was out.

She wanted to go for a walk. Fine with me. If she had wanted to go and swim in the lake it would have been fine with me too, December or not. I had always avoided walks in the daytime but holding her hand I dared anything. Still needed my shades, though, they put a friendly didgeridoo blanket between me and the world and made it manageable.




Mate Ch. 02



We walked, hand in hand. No snow and we spoke idly of global warming when we met Dr Walrus. He was jogging, no polar bear in pursuit. I don´t know why, but that sight was to me the conclusive proof of global warming. Of course I intellectually knew it was the sad truth, I can follow scientific reasoning, but this was proof on an emotional level. He gave us a cheery wave with his flipper.

I suppose we were easy to recognize, my face was still looking really banged up and Magda´s black eye wasn´t as faded as I had thought, now that I could look at her for all of five seconds. Daylight was more revealing, too. It was more like a yellow and green eye now. She still intended to go to work next day and I wondered how to survive all those hours without her. I wondered even more how I had survived all those years without her. I did not want to think of how to survive when she left me. People were looking at us a little oddly, probably wondering what had happened to us. I was glad that I was the most wounded one. That way hopefully no one thought that I was the one who had hit her.

We had coffee and waffles, still holding hands. I was thinking of bee-keeping (don´t ask me why) when she wanted to know more about me and chess.

"I discovered it by accident." I said. "I was eight and I had an assistant teacher then because I was so confused that nothing worked out for me in school. It was manageable if I could sit by myself in a small room and sometimes this guy was with me. One day he wanted to play chess and I beat him. I just made the moves that seemed right. We played again and I won. He said that he did his best and that he was a fair player. He thought I should join a chess club. I did. Not that I really cared about chess, but it was nice to be good at something."

"I see like lines of power, and danger zones smell bad. I played a lot, first I played the other kids, then the adults. I usually won, but the game itself was getting dull. Winning was not so exciting anymore and I had...problems with the rest of my life. I started to pretend the chess-games were battles to make them more exciting. I really got into that for a while, my escapist trip to get away from everything, I guess. I discovered that the more I could pretend that the game was a real battle that really meant something, the better I play."

"These days my games are all grand adventures. I save the world from the forces of evil or free the slaves or whatever. Every game (almost) is exciting while it lasts. When they are over I usually feel let down and low, because it´s all pretend and means nothing. My fantasy-battles are no more meaningless than chess itself, though. I have never been able to understand why anyone would pay people to play that meaningless game."

Magda

Poor dear. He was so sad. I tried to cheer him up:

"I can´t say that the chess-playing means anything to me either. I don´t understand chess that well. But clearly there must be people who see the beauty of chess played well and are prepared to pay for it. To them you are creating something worthwhile. You´re like a musician."

"Well I can see that. But musicians should make music they like themselves. If they make music just to make money they are whores. Like me." 

I kissed him. I felt we had had enough of existential angst for today. "So. Do you think we will have sex today?" He had a great big coughing fit then, seems I had startled a piece of waffle so it lost its way to his stomach. If so - where had it been when I kissed him? Life is full of these unanswered questions. My question about sex was not to remain unanswered, though:

"Today is fine with me."

"Good. I´m on the pill, so pregnancy is not an issue. Am I correct in assuming that I don´t have to worry about nasty surprises with you?"

"You are."

"Good. I cannot guarantee that Roger was not cheating on me, but far as I know I´m clean"

"Good enough for me."

"Good. Take me home and fuck me."

"Good. Fine. Yeah."

"Good." So much for my plans of a slow and careful seduction. But I felt that he was ready. I sure was. We walked home, holding hands, he a little pale.

Peter

This was the scariest, most wonderful walk of my life. I tried to plan ahead, drawing on instructions I had read and films I had seen. But I kept getting distracted by the here and now fantasticness of holding her hand, watching her hair dance and feeling that animal smell which was growing stronger all the time. Planning ahead has never been my strong point.

"I want to be under water." she said when I unlocked the house with trembling fingers. She walked into my waterbed room, spread arms and legs and said: "Undress me!"

I was nervous but not unbearably so. I had pushed my limits many times already in my short time with Magda, this was not scarier than meeting her parents, really. I decided to take it slow, I had read that the typical beginner´s mistake is to be in too much of a hurry.

I rubbed myself against her like a cat, all over. This while enjoying her symphony of smells, growing richer all the time. I moved from high to low and back - sniffing her hair, kissing her toes. I stroked her with my good hands and wished I could use both since my right hand reveled in the feel of the fabric electrified by her flesh beneath. I undid a button, proud to manage that with one hand without a fumble. Another button.

I dared to explore her buttocks, the firm muscle hardness but softness. The colors were too many and diverse to name, the music slow but majestic, like Mozart´s Requiem but without the sadness. I kissed her neck, throat, shoulder, belly. I nibbled a little. My hand ventured beneath her shirt and I felt her smooth warm very living skin of her beautiful back. She was breathing more rapidly, which encouraged me to tog at the shirt, off you go and it was off, I guess Magda helped.

Oh, the beautiful skin of her beautiful stomach. I kissed her, sniffed her navel, stroked her back. Magda took my hand and put it on her breast and it, too, was gloriously alive through the thin cotton black bra. I realized my dick was painfully stiff and tried to rip right through my trousers. Well, he just would have to wait. 

I was busy burying my face in her tits, gradually removing her bra with my nose, when Magda apparently was done with taking it slow. She quickly got rid of her trousers and pants, then my trousers and pants. She turned round and bent over. "Fuck me right fucking now!" she said.

I had a fleeting thought that maybe we should move to the hard room, but then my freed dick took over and buried itself in her. I could manage this position with one hand and I let go of all caution and let rip. I even slapped her a few times, like in the films. She seemed to like it and then she smelled even better and screamed. I realized she had an orgasm and now it would be ok for me to come too without being premature.

I felt proud and happy and wild and pumped away. It felt better than anything ever, raw and primitive and tender at the same time. Finally I came with a roar (which I suppose was too much for my sore throat, but fuck that) and she came with me and we collapsed on the water bed. I lay there, stroking her, realizing that I just died. Peter the weird freak is dead. Peter who fantastic girls want to make love to is born. And he could hope for just about anything.



Mate Ch. 03



Peter

I was walking to my appointment with Ola, giggling at the thought of how surprised he would be. This week I had much more interesting things to talk about than how dull and meaningless my life was. And this once I did not know what he would say and what he would think. I was humming the goofy sitar-theme of "Winds of Change" (Animals), since this time I was not coming for my weekly fix of comforting sameness. The sitar, the didgeridoo drone of my shades, birds bright in the sky like little jewels with lice and the carbonated bubbling of my happy blood made for spring feelings, helped along by the warmest December ever.

His waiting room was the same but not the same. I was not the same and everything had changed. I was in love. I had had sex. Good sex. I was a hero. In spite of all this I was a little worried that Ola would be angry about my missing last week's appointment. But surely being unconscious in hospital was a valid excuse.

"It looks like you have a lot to tell me today." he said. He looked sort of happy, maybe he too could smell something. There was a golden glow to his mossyness. I had, so I did. I told him about me falling in love. And I told him about the attack and the hospital and Magda and her moving in and me meeting her friends and her parents and having sex and me falling in love. The goldening of the moss had increased, and there was a definite smell of that spice I never remember the name of, so I could tell that he was pleased as punch, which is a strange expression, come to think of it.

Ola made that little movement with his hand he always makes before speaking. It makes me think that he would have liked to hold a pipe. Not to smoke it, he doesn't smoke, but just to wield it, a tool of his trade boosting his authority and confidence.

"These are wonderful news," he said. "Tell me, do you feel depressed now?"

"Not in the least."

"No, And even if this romance ends badly you will be less depressed than before. Unhappy and devastated maybe, but depression is not predominantly about sadness. Everything that's part of life is the opposite of depression, including broken hearts. And I must admit I'm a romantic cream cheese, I believe in the healing power of love."

I was crying. 

"Excuse me, I said. "I just realized that pretty soon I will not need you anymore. This growing business sucks sometimes." It did, but not as much as it was fantastic. 

Magda

We overslept. We had both been so wrapped up in each other last night that none of us remembered that everyday life was about to begin again. Luckily Peter woke up before I was hopelessly late, but there was no time for morning sex, a proper breakfast or a shower. I snagged a piece of bread to chew on while pedaling and was off. If I smelled of sex, so be it. I had at least brushed my teeth. 

Our city is mid-sized for being Swedish, small for just about everywhere else. It's small enough to go anywhere in the city by bike, for which I yet again was grateful that morning. I was at my school in twenty minutes. Time for a cup of coffee, thank god. 

My entrance caused quite a stir, just as I had expected. Sick leave and then appear with the multi-hued remnants of a royal black eye is bound to be noticed. 

"It's ok to joke about it!" I assured them. It would take them a while to reach joking mode, but I knew they would get there.

"What happened?" Karin asked. She's my best friend at work.

"My asshole ex wanted to make clear who was the master of the house. Which he is now, by the way. He can lord it over his hamster."

"What will you tell your class?"

"The truth. If they ask."

"Are you sure that's wise?" That was Birger, my least favorite colleague. I wonder why I seldom get along with gym-teachers. "They are only ten, after all."

"What else would I tell them? That I fell down the stairs or walked into a door?"

"I don't think we teachers should spread rumors about people."

"Rumors! I know you know Roger a bit, but he hit me in the bloody face."

"All I'm saying is I haven't heard his side of the story."

"I'm sure he'll say I provoked him. Well, you are pissing me off right now and I won't hit you."

My class did not ask. I probably looked like I would bite their heads off if they did. Eventually I raised the subject myself. I had dug out some statistics and they were shocked. The boys were sweetly certain that they never would hit someone they lived with, insofar they could imagine living with a woman at all, cooties still being a factor. I hoped they were right. Almost everyone gave me a hug, and I cried a little bit.

The world was a shitty place in so many ways. Peter had chosen to opt out of that world to survive, building his own little universe. I must be careful not to tear down that universe, but it would be nice if his world could expand into mine and the other way around.

Peter

"Changes", Band of Gypsys version. Yes, there were changes coming. I had given myself permission to hope, and hope I would. I was banging along on my drums to the music in my head, longing for my left arm. It would soon be with me again, the pain was just a violet whisper now. I was hoping for a life with Magda, of course - that was old new already. I was hoping for friends and perhaps to play in a band. Could I? Maybe, with the right people. I would ask Bettan and Erik if they wanted to play with me sometime. Could I play on stage, with a crowd? Maybe. One step at a time.

I had to synch myself better with Magda, time-wise. I couldn't live my life at nights anymore. Small sacrifice. I was excited. I wanted to change more, faster, broaden my horizons. I went into the bad flat to confront the floor but its passively malevolent plastic shit-brown-squared self-satisfied ugliness defeated me. I staggered out, shaken. 

This was a floor which detested everything more complicated than moronic game-shows on TV. A floor that hated everything that was new or different. It certainly hated me and it was mutual. It was racist, too. And Christian in that way which was all -ian and no Christ. I could of course just hire someone to rip it out and put something more open-minded in, but that would be too easy. I was, after all, a master strategist in the world of non-real battles. I would ponder the situation and make my plans. Tremble, floor! 

Meanwhile I broadened my horizons by saying hello to my neighbor. He looked very surprised. It was fun to be able to chock people by doing really ordinary things. I felt sorry for all the people who had been normal all their lives and didn't have a clue how fun it was. But now I had to make the bouillabaisse and bake bread, Magda would be home soon. 

MAGDA

Peter had made a wonderful fish-soup, served with bread still hot from the oven. This improved my mood somewhat, which was lousy after yet another conversation with Birger. He was of the opinion that I should not say anything about what had happened because newspapers had the policy of not mentioning the name of people accused of a crime until they had been found guilty. Never mind that Roger had tried to take my head off, I should shut up about it because "being accused of a crime is a serious matter." Fuck him!

Peter was angry about it too and tried to think of clever ways of taking revenge. Unfortunately these plans were on the level of letting the air out of Birger's bicycle tires. Some grand-master.

I asked him if he wanted to celebrate Christmas with me and my family. He did.

"Wonderful! I've been having such fun going normal today. It will be a normal, traditional Christmas, right? Dancing round the tree? Almond in the porridge? Lutfisk! Donald Duck! Buying too many presents and eating yourself sick?"

"Not quite that abnormally normal, but, yeah close."

"All right. You have to coach me a bit but I think I can make it. I have to get presents for everyone. Who will be there?"

"My parents, my sister and her family; her husband, (Conny) and two kids (Greta and Emma). And us. That's it."

"Right. Good. How many gifts each should I get?"

"None for the grown-ups. Except me. It's ok if you get something for the kids." He was a little disappointed but seemed to accept the limits. He started talking about the ugly floor in the empty flat but I must admit I didn't really follow him. I was distracted. Horny, to be blunt.

"Peter." I interrupted him. "I don't want to talk about the floor right now. I want you to have me for dessert." He snuggled close and sniffed me. 

"Yes." he smiled. "It smells like the dessert is ready to be enjoyed. I think the plant-room will be best." The bed in the plant-room was big, white and ornate. Romantic. 

I lay on my back, him kneeling between my legs. He sniffed me again and tasted me carefully.

"Mmmm. You go perfectly with bouillabaisse." I knew that this was the first time for him, but there was no awkwardness or hesitation. Nor was there those puppy-dog looks saying "Praise me because I'm a modern man who do this for you." He just went at it hammer and tongue. Well, the hammer had to wait a little, but he didn't seem to mind. 

I came and he didn't slow down. Again, and he seemed almost lost in what he was doing. I had to stop him, move him on to the next step. I would have preferred to have him over me, but that would not work with his arm in a sling. I pushed him on his back and mounted him, careful of his ribs.

We took a shower together, which is not all that romantic and sensual with sling and bandages which are not supposed to get wet. Then I had to grade papers, which of course is immensely un-romantic. But we slept together, in the white plant-room bed. Never slept better.

Peter

Sleeping with Magda was almost better than being awake with her and for a moment I considered waking her up to compare. But no, it was more important to feel her sleep, hold her dreams which grew slowly, soap-bubbles of sleepy colors and soft sounds. She whispered my name in her sleep and I almost had a heart attack because I was so proud. It would have been a good way to die, too. I couldn't sleep so I just lay there, trying to record this moment of happiness so I could comfort myself by torturing me with it if she left me.

Tuesday morning came. Everything was grey the way it is grey a cloudy snowless December day in Sweden. Magda was also greyer than usual when she left. I don't think she is a morning person. 

Later that day I figured out how to teach that floor a lesson. Ha! But I had to speak to Magda about it, and find the right person. And presents. I had to get the presents. The closer to Christmas the more jam-packed the stores would be. I still couldn't handle all stores, the real big ones, like malls, were out. But I found some things I was happy to buy. I bought a necklace for Magda, that was fun. A small, undangerous goldsmith shop. No other customers. One necklace clearly orange, although made of silver. 

Magda

"Magda, we have to talk." Oops. That was scary.

"I have been thinking about the bad flat. I think I would like it if someone lived there. Someone who wouldn't mind the floor."

"Fine with me. What did you have in mind?"

"I don't feel good about having an empty flat when so many homeless people are coming to Sweden. Of course I can't solve the refugee situation by myself, but I can do a little. And that bloody racist floor will shit itself!"

My sweet Peter sure was eager to get out of his safe bubble-universe. I hoped he would not be in too much of a hurry and live to regret it, but I admired his courage. He felt sure that he would be able to find someone whose chords where sufficiently suitable to fit in. We carried stuff from the attic, grateful there was a bed left. He was always in a hurry to get out of the bad flat. I agreed that the floor was ugly, but to me it was normal-ugly, not evil. Hopefully our refugee would feel the same.

At work, things were ok. My black eye was yesterday's news, literally. I had told Karin about Peter but no one else. I didn't want a lot of gossip about how soon I had switched boyfriends. Karin found it all delightfully funny and couldn't wait to meet Peter.

Peter

I made a few phone-calls, and then I met up with the deacon of the nearest church. They had a bunch of Syrian men living in a big room, a mattress dormitory temporary kind of deal. I had brought typical Swedish cinnamon rolls, they had tea. We sat, munching rolls and talking. Some of them spoke English and it was nice to chat about strange Swedish food, their long and arduous journey and their hopes for the future. I found it strangely soothing to talk to people I had no language in common with. It went slow enough for me to follow and communication was not solely word-based. 

All the while I tasted their smells and smelled their colors. Some were straight out. Particularly one who reeked of hostility and self-satisfaction, in spite of his friendly smile. But several gave out good vibes. It suddenly struck me that I would have to choose one and thereby un-choose the others. I was someone with power over their lives and I did not like it.

But making a choice was necessary and I knew who I would get along with, a quiet dark red man named Yussef. He only knew a few words in English, but we spoke well enough anyway. I managed to communicate the situation and he managed to communicate that he could not possibly accept my kind offer if not his younger brother was included since it was Yussef's duty to take care of him. It did not matter that the flat was very small - just a room and a kitchenette. Nor did it matter that there was only one bed - if there was no mattress to be found Yussef could sleep on the floor.

The brother was young, surely no more than eighteen. He, too, was red, but a paler shade than Yussefs earthy rumbling red. But, sure, he seemed pleasant enough. His name was David. The deacon helped with the paperwork, thank god, and then we went home to the flat while I pointed out things of interest, naming them in Swedish (which is now English) - jackdaw, postbox, lawn, bridge, shop, oak, home. 

They had almost nothing. No prayer mat, unfortunately - the floor would have hated that. They had a small allowance to subsist on and now they had somewhere to live. They were happy for themselves but worried about friends and family. I had to leave now, I still had my limits. My head was full of voices, smells and colors. I left and spent the rest of the day in the nest.

No dinner for Magda today and I was ashamed, but she was not angry and she made pancakes which I hadn't eaten in years. We ate in her kitchen and she invited Yussef and David. They stayed up and talked a long time and I fell asleep in the nest. Before I fell asleep I worried that I had maybe made a mistake inviting two more people into my house, but then Magda came and slept with me and all was well. 

Magda

I really liked Yussef and David was a nice kid too. Peter was amazing at reading people's character, particularly for a just-reformed recluse. Made me proud that he had chosen me for his girl. Thanks to Google translate we could communicate pretty well. He was worried sick about his wife and daughter, they had been put on different boats in Turkey and he hadn't seen them since then. The daughter was ten.

They wanted to know what they could do to help around the house. I didn't know and Peter had gone to bed by then, but the day after they had cleaned the stairway and raked leaves in the garden. We did find an extra mattress, by the way.

Peter

Christmas was getting closer. Previous years, Christmas had only been something mindlessly malevolent to be avoided as much as possible. I still didn't want it in my home, but I was looking forward to Christmas Eve. Me and Magda were now officially a couple and this would be my first time ever meeting-her-family thing as a partner of anyone. Growing, growing, growing.

I was no longer nervous about Yussef and David. They were grateful, but not too grateful, not metallic yellow grateful where all that strident gratitude becomes a burden. And the floor was a lot less smugly unflappable, it lost a little of its stick-in-the-mud brownsquaryness with every Arabic word spoken and every balaclava eaten. 

My first Christmas-gift, the day before Christmas Eve, was to lose the sling and most of my bandages. I still didn't have full strength and mobility, but finally I could hug Magda properly, with both arms. That night was my first time in missionary position - again the commonplace was exotic for me and I loved it. 

"No, Peter." Magda said. "No tie. No suit either. This is a casual family gathering, you are not expected to dress up. Jeans and a shirt will be fine."

"Ok." Maybe I ought to take notes. "Any pointers? I don't want to disappoint you."

"Just be your sweet self. Try not to worry about making an impression and you'll be fine. If you feel shy you don't have to speak. Just relax." 

Weirdly, my heart beat with the beat of Ravel's Bolero in the taxi to Magda's parents. Nervous, yes, but again; good nervous. Bolero's is not a beat that accepts defeat. Cinnamon!

Door opens, hello Magdadad, hello Magdamom! Met you before, old pals now. Her mother a bit of a big rodent today, bustling about. Rabbit? Guineapig! Daddy; warm beer. Both friendly. 

Then big sister Lisa. Orange, too, but not as strong as Magda. Blonde, but otherwise the sisters were in many ways alike. Lisa gave me a hug and informed me she had heard a lot about me. I answered likewise since that sounded good although it was not strictly true, as far as I could remember. I had learned that the wheels of social life were greased by small polite lies and now I was practicing. Husband Conny ; a laid-back denim smell/color. I knew that Lisa was a teacher, now I learned that Conny was, too. And Magdamum. Did teachers usually run in packs?

Sugar and spice and all things nice were what Greta and Emma were made of. Pepper and bile, too, thank god. I fell in love right away. Magda had asked me if I liked children but I didn't know then. Now, after about half a second, I knew that I at least liked these children. They seemed to take to me as well and wanted to show me things right away. They had made drawings which were brilliant and they wanted to include me in a very interesting game where the rules kept changing. The pillow which was a hill suddenly was breakfast and the shoe that was a boat became a cow. The nuttier my contributions were the more earnest they were in accepting them and I reveled in the lovely feeling that nothing mattered but was very important. They smelled good, too.

Magda

It was adorable the way he was lost in the game just like my darling nieces. 

"There's a lot of baby-sitting in store for you two." my sister said. "He really is sweet." 

"Sweet and brave," I said proudly. "And a man when it's needed."

"Stop right there." Dad said. "Remember there are fathers present. Does he want gloegg?"

"I would like to try some gloegg." Peter said. "I've never had it." Gloegg is warm spiced wine which is only served at Christmas. You put raisins and almonds in it. "But then I don't think I should drink any more alcohol."

"Is there a problem?" Dad asked.

"I don't know. I've never been drunk, really. Slightly tipsy is fine, I know I can handle that. I've had a beer or a glass of wine now and then. I think I want to try getting smashed sometime and see what happens, but not with kids around. Who knows, I might get real obnoxious."

"Skoal!" Dad said. "To Nils!" Nils was my brother, who died when he was eighteen. The first toast is always for him. He was handicapped, two years younger than me. Died of kidney failure. Peter thinks my urge to help people has a lot to do with Nils. I can see the logic, he may be right. According to him Ola would say just that.

Peter




Mate Ch. 03



Gloegg was nice. The spices set off a deep bass-with-a-bow humming, helped along by the alcohol. Everybody's colors took on more intensity. This was why I usually avoided drinking except very little and alone - all my impressions grew and what was complicated became impossibly complicated. But I knew I was safe here and the chords were in harmony. In fact it was good to get larger doses of everyone, but I declined when Magdadad asked if I wanted more. I must not get too cocky.

Greta and Emma wanted to play more and I did too. This game began somewhere else but evolved into their creeping around pretending they were invisible and then jump out and say Booh! My job was to pretend to be scared or angry or happy and make faces and strange noises. (KWAEEK) This was fun, too and I could talk a bit with (OOOUMPH) the others if they didn't mind the occasional (IIIILP) interruption. They didn't. I talked about (FLAAFF) music with Conny. He was into World music, a genre I knew very little of, except Irish folk annd what Yussef sang while working. I liked (UMPHAAA) that well enough. Conny introduced me to Tinariwen, for which I will always be grateful. Red desert earth and fragile monotonous beauty. (GOOOOP)

Three o'clock - time for Donald Duck. End of GOOOOP-game. The probably weirdest of all Swedish Christmas customs is that almost all swedes watch an hour of Disney cartoons every Christmas Eve, the same ones every year. Except me, I had never seen them before which apparently was a major weirdness to all. We all sat down to watch except Magdamom who fussed around offering us things to nibble on and putting the final touches to the Christmas dinner which was to follow. I offered to help, but no.

I didn't mind an hour on the couch, particularly not when Emma wanted to sit in my lap and watch. Heaven is a three year old girl warm and alive and in your lap and smelling of little girl sweat from having played with you. I was so happy and so proud that she chose my lap. I would have fought a tiger for her, no questions asked. 

Pride was another of these new feelings. Pride that Greta and Emma liked me. Pride (of course) that Magda liked, even loved, even wanted to have sex with me. Pride that I was a hero. Pride that I had been such a good fellow human being and invited Yussef and David into my home. Of course there were plenty of shortcomings, they were old friends or at least acquaintances, but it felt nice to finding more and more to balance them with.

It was hard to concentrate on the Disney-cartoons. Chip and Dale were throwing nuts at Pluto, but I didn't understand why, if there was a why. There was a bowl of nuts on the table, they were more interesting to me. They mumbled to themselves in their beautiful brown sensibleness. Nutty is a very inappropriate word. Nuts are, as I said, sensible. They are what they are and that's it. I carefully chose the prettiest nut (a meaningless concept to them) and put it in my pocket. I would plant it as a keepsake and to celebrate that she got away from Chip and Dale.

The dinner was massive. Risgrynsgroet; a sweet porridge made from rice. There should be one almond hidden in it and whoever gets it is supposed to get married next year. I planned to eat a lot of porridge if I had to - that almond was mine. Or Magda's. Lutfisk - a weird fish dish. It's made from saithe or ling which are dried until hard as wood. They can be stored like forever in that state and a few days before cooking them they are softened in water and lye. White, slimy, tasteless and considered a great delicacy. 

Then there were pickled herrings, baked ham, smoked salmon, ribs, meatballs, sausages, bread, potatoes, cheese, kalvsylta, which is a not very good thing with small pieces of meat in jelly, beets, janssons frestelse (a potato dish with salty fish in it), cow's tongue and pigs feet. I reeled at the sight of this aggressive multitude of dishes. 

"Don't worry," Magda whispered. "Eat as much or little as you want and you don't have to try everything." Still, the chords were discordant. We didn't eat in the same room, thank god, and it was bearable for short hunting trips to slay a rib and a beet or whatever. 

I started with the porridge, and very cunningly asked everyone to please be quiet for a moment. The rest of the food tried to distract me, but I was able to concentrate and localize the almond by sound and smell. The others thought I was kidding, so it was a great delight to be able to display the almond of upcoming matrimony. Lots of kidding about marriage ensued. Magda's cheeks were a little red, but I knew from her smell that she was not displeased. I wanted to propose to her right then and there, but I had no ring and it would embarrass her if she didn't want to say yes. I would ask in private. Soon.

The effects of the gloegg had faded away and I risked having a bottle of Christmas beer with the food. I must admit that the combined forces of food and drink got the better of me. I politely thanked Magdamom for a fantastic meal, staggered into the TV room and fell asleep on the couch. 

When I woke up Magda and the girls had made me into a rabbit. They had made ears out of towels somehow, painted my nose black and then black whiskers. They all laughed their heads off when I pretended to be outraged, my heart full of love. Smell of blueberry pie, a Strauss waltz. The girls wanted to know why I had talked about lobsters in my sleep when they put on the ears, but I had no answer to that. 

It was now time for presents. Magdadad had gone out "to buy a newspaper" and he knocked on the door dressed in a Santa-suit of seldom seen hideousness. Greta and Emma took it in their stride, modern kids are apparently afraid of nothing. At their age I probably would have shat myself if I had met a creature such as the Magdadad-santa. Good thing my "dad" always had been busy being unconscious from having drunk too much at Christmas.

Well, this Santa was as jolly as he was hideous and soon the room was full of torn paper, delighted cries, ho-ho-hos (could be a great band-name) and me, who tried to follow who got what from who (rabbit ears flopping) and how the girls and Magda would react to my presents. It felt like one of the more frantic Pogues-tunes from the inside. My rabbit ears had by now lost both their rabbit-ness and their ear-ness. I looked more like wilted rhubarb with nose and whiskers.

Greta and Emma opened their presents at the same time, which was good since I had bought them both the same thing - a pair of good binoculars. They played with them a lot that night, actually - watching things like the neighbors and reported what they got for Christmas. They wanted to go out and watch things too, but all birds were asleep and the moon hidden behind clouds. Magda loved her necklace, just like I thought she would. I also gave her a pair of long-distance skates, since skating is something I like and hoped she would take to, too. That kind of skates you use on frozen lakes and she seemed happy enough with it.

Magda had bought me clothes. A pair of trousers and a sweatshirt. I loved them and I loved that I hadn't had to buy them myself. A new hope turned up - the hope that I would never have to buy my own clothes again. I sat, happy, nibbling homemade Christmas sweets in spite of being full. I felt like I belonged. I was no longer Peter the freakish recluse, I had a family, belonged to a tribe. It was good to know. Everything felt good right now, my rabbit rhubarb ears, my overflowing stomach and my future, growing brighter and brighter in my mind.

Merry fucking Christmas, everyone.



Mate Ch. 04



Magda

"Marry me!" he said.

"Sure."

"Good."

"When?"

"Soon."

"Good."

"Hungry?"

"No."

That was it. Maybe not the world's most romantic proposal, but conventional romance had never been Peter's strong point. But he was sweet as a honey-soaked kitten and life with him was never dull. Of course I wanted to marry him! Yesterday he had captured the hearts of all the females of the family, and the males liked him too. His nose was still black and not many women can say they have been proposed to by a semi-rabbit.

"Shit!" he said.

"What?"

"The ring! I'm supposed to give you a ring! That was why I didn't propose yesterday and here I go and forget and propose anyway. I'm so bloody impulsive."

"It's only in American movies you have to have a ring and go down on your knee and all that, which is good since you didn't. We can buy a ring together."

"Good. I know a goldsmith who doesn't scare me."

"But I do would like you to kiss me." He did. Very thoroughly and in many places and when he was finished his nose wasn't black anymore. Go figure. Afterwards we were lazily cuddling and Peter pretended to smoke a cigarette and look cool, which he said the chord needed because of what we said about American movies.

"I have been thinking about New Year," he said. "I think it's the right time to get drunk. You, me, Bettan, Erik, Yussuf and David. Safe people, and if I get obnoxious or violent Erik can deal with me easily. And it's wonderfully normal to get drunk on New Year's Eve. But no fireworks! Animals don't like them and neither do I. Loud wrong and metallic!"

"Sure, my sweet machobunny, get smashed if you want. And I am sure you won't be a nasty drunk. Only risk I see is that you may fall asleep before midnight. Or puke."

Peter

I am engaged. Engaged to be married to the most goodorangely wonderful human being who ever trod this earth. Even her farts smell good. Yussef and David congratulated me with hugs and got their un-christmas gifts. Yussef had let slip once that he played the clarinet so I got him one. David got a laptop, not a very fancy one but he was happy. Yussef was happy too, now he could spend more time looking for his wife and daughter on the net. 

My drums were calling me. They wanted a good beating so they could tell the world how happy I was. It was great to have two arms again. Loud right. 

It suddenly got real cold. Clear, sunny winter days like the taste of medicine. A little bit of snow made everything less dark and depressing. I went for long runs in the snow, telling the ground about my happiness by drumming it with my feet. Yussef and David were chocked, though, they had thought that the warm winter we had had that far was cold enough. We had to help them find real winter clothes, and they still preferred to be indoors.

After a few days of this Magda and me went to try out her new skates. Long distance skates are contraptions you strap on to your shoes. They are not made for quick turns but enable you to travel fast and for long distances. Magda loved it, to my great delight, but the ice was not safe for long trips yet. We stayed close to the shore where there were people and others had skated before us. Skatable days were always festive here by the lake close to town. There were several fires and hot dogs were being grilled. 

This was one of those occasions where normal rules don't apply and Swedes can talk to people they don't know without being drunk. We chatted with a guy, Johan, who turned out to be a psychiatrist. He and his German wife skated every chance they got, they were in a club. He knew Ola but got that look that psych people get when you talk about something job-related. It's like they are chewing on something big they would have liked to spit out, but can't. Back to the club, which sounded like fun. Being in a group with people who knew what they were doing they could take more risks and go where the ice wasn't totally dependable. They were off. They skated beautifully, totally relaxed and unhurried, yet with great speed. Again - beautiful! And all kinds of blue.

Christmas was a family thing but at New Year the usual procedure was to party with your friends. This I had never done, of course, since I had no friends before. I was very proud this year to have four people coming to our little party. I had insisted that there should be plenty of alcohol, but I had not managed to buy it. In Sweden all alcohol is sold is special shops to keep consumption down. Just before New Year those shops are full of needy and irritated people, making an awful ambience I just couldn't handle. Magda sent me to get some good food while she took care of the liquor. 

I took care of the cooking. I will not bore you with details. I like to cook but it's incredibly boring to watch someone cooking on TV. Reading about it must be even worse. I was pleased with the dinner, though.

Magda

Peter was totally wrapped up in his happiness with our engagement and the excitement of the New Year's party. I was a little low since the police told me yesterday that they would not go any further about Roger and the battering. They had spoken to him, he denied everything, word against word, he wouldn't get convicted anyway, lack of resources, bye bye. It was not that they didn't believe me, they said, but for a conviction more than that was needed.

Peter really tried to care and he acted like he was just as upset as I, but he is a lousy actor, bless him. In other circumstances I'm sure he would have been properly indignant, but there just wasn't room for such feelings in his happy head right now. It wasn't a big deal - I could gripe about it with Bettan and Karin. I didn't look forward to meeting Birger again, though, I just knew he was going to say something smug and idiotic.

The party went off to a good start. Yussef and David didn't drink of course. They had learned quite a bit of Swedish in these weeks, but conversation still was special. A lot of giggling and innovative ways of making ourselves understood. Peter said very little. He had his getting-drunk experiment going and he mainly sat and smiled, watching everyone in that special way he has. He explained that he had a scientific approach - he aimed to slowly increase his degree of drunkness and observe the effects for each step. As yet little was observable from the outside. His smile may have been a little wider and looser and his giggling perhaps slightly louder.

Peter

The drunker I got the brighter and louder they got. Smells increased, too. This would have been unbearable if I had been with people that I didn't like. Note to self; don't get drunk among strangers. Now, it was kind of pleasant to be inundated in the presence of my friends, the chords loud like I was on a rock concert blown away by massive sound. 

But the intermittent nagging of fireworks disturbed me. Some start early, I suppose people with small kids who goes to bed before midnight. Every explosion set off a bad taste like chewing on old copper coins and I started to worry about midnight, when the real fireworks would begin. The way I was going I might lie in the nest and tremble by then, the way our dog used to react.

I decided to halt the experiment. I was a little disappointed and in a way it would have been more fulfilling to have the experiment end in a disaster, at least from a story-telling point of view. Yussef and David also disliked the fireworks, by the way, but for very different reasons. It brought back memories from Syria, the shooting and the bombing. 

The rest of the evening I just coasted along, floating like an albatross on the updrafts of alcohol and ambience. Sometimes I had the presence of mind to understand what they said, sometimes not. I occasionally said something that seemed appropriate at the time. Also, I was lord of the stereo, deciding what music should be played - an important macho thing, I was told. I was pleased that there was some small thing I did right from a macho point of view. Maybe I should get a TV so I could be lord of the remote-control, too - apparently another area of male dominance. On the other hand, why should I get a TV now, when I didn't even want one when I hadn't got a life?

Magda

Peter told us that he had had enough alcohol around ten. He would have a glass of champagne at midnight, he said, but no more. We talked and laughed and had a good time. Suddenly the new year was begun and we all went out in the garden to get a better view of the fireworks. Peter watched them with a sad expression.

"They are not evil," he said. "But they don't care. They don't care that they make a lot of noise and scare animals and some people. They don't care that they are poisonous either. They just care that they are pretty and loud is good because it makes people take notice." Sometimes he sounds like an irritating Wise Man in a bad fantasy novel, but part of the irritation is that you know that there is a lot of truth in what he says. 

Drunk sex was intended to be a part of the experiment, but Peter promptly fell asleep when the guests had left. We agreed that Peter and alcohol was a bad combination.

"Never again!" he said, further shaken by his life's first real hangover. "Tipsy is fine, drunk un-fine. Too risky."

Peter felt that being hung over and nauseous was the proper state to tell me more about his family. 

"My father was a bloody drunk and petty tyrant. He left when I was four and good riddance. Bitter metallic yellow fear is all I remember of him. Mom screaming and I was too small to help. When he disappeared it was much better, but still pretty shitty. We never had any money, I had to do the cooking if I wanted to eat anything else than sandwiches. Mom was mostly in bed. I can see now she was depressed. Wistfully weak violet, dark grey. Then black. She killed herself. I was gone for a week for a big chess tournament. I was eighteen. I won - my first big win and it almost made me a grand-master. I was excited about having won, felt happy that I had something good to tell Mom. 

She had taken pills, then hung herself for good measure, she really meant business. They said she must have done it right away when I left. I guess that she hadn't had the time to rot all that much, but to me the stench of putrifying mother decaying flesh was like a wall of slime when I got home. That's why I can't bear the smell of rotting meat today. Brings me right back. I lived by myself then, I was a legal adult and I made enough money to support myself. And I had Ola, he's been there all those years. I think he has saved my life. And soon I will lose him because I don't need him anymore."

I hugged him and kissed him and hugged him again. I whispered everything beautiful to him and I comforted him and tried to make him feel that I would be his mother sometimes when he needed to. And I kissed him some more and pulled his pants down and gave him a slow loving blowjob and made him feel that most of the time I bloody well was not his mother at all. And we both cried for sadness and joy at the same time.

Peter

This year's first tournament was coming up. It was in Athens, which had Yussef somewhat excited. I had promised to do all I could to find his family. What I could do was to give interviews and tell the story and show photographs. Hopefully some newspaper or TV-station would find it sufficiently interesting to publish. I was a little nervous about it, I usually avoided interviews the best I could.

My plan otherwise was to try to revert to my old role as much as possible. When playing chess I had to be Peter P Hansson, savant chess-weirdo. The P in the middle didn't mean anything. At one of my very first tournaments, when I was just a boy, they asked my name and I was so nervous I started to say Peter a second time. I've always liked having a separate identity for the chess-me, and now it is even more important. I also felt the name was a part of my un-machoness. Peepee the little willie beating the piss out of the big dicks.

I had Bulov in the first round. Bulov the Belarusian Bore. My games against him always became drawn-out siege scenarios in dreary landscapes with severe shortage of water or pouring rain. It ended in a draw, as usual. Bulov smelled sour like old socks and nibbled raw carrots while playing.

My hotel room was too fake-grand. Fake leather couch, thick carpet and a lot of metal that pathetically tried to look like gold. The chords were just plain wrong and something had to be done. My drum kit would have cowed the room into submission easily and if I had been a famous rock star or something it might have been tolerated. Chess players are not expected to be noisy, though, we are more quietly nuts. 

I took a walk to try and find something that would balance the chords. In a big toy store I found the very thing - a glockenspiel. Between games I then sat in my room and played Nirvana tunes on my glockenspiel, which I named Hilda. Hilda had a mild but undeniable presence and her childish brightness was not at all impressed by ostentatious false gold.

I managed to get interviewed by one TV-channel and two papers. I dutifully answered their questions, then I told them about Yussuf and his family. I showed pictures of them (Sarah and Yasmine) and promised a reward to whosoever knew where they were. They probably were dead, of course. But there was still a chance.

We were down to eight players I the tournament now. Bulov was not one of them (ha!) but Kostadikis was doing great and the audience was happy. I walked to my hotel that night, pleased that I had made the cut. I was thinking that, surprisingly, chess felt much less meaningless than before. Now I had the beginning of a family to take care of and now there was a meaning in the money-making itself. I was providing for the kids I did not yet have.

Something happened.

You who are reading this story will not be surprised by what happened. Stories are constructed in certain patterns and seldom surprise. When I have told you my story I have undoubtedly made choices about what to tell and how to tell it to make it as much like a story as possible. But remember that to me it was not a story. It was reality and reality doesn't follow the neat rules of story-telling. 

Imagine yourself in my place when she, totally out of the blue, comes up to me, touches my arm and says "Mr. Hansson?" And imagine the feelings when I realize that it is her! It's Sarah, the wife of my friend who in the secret places in his heart is sure that she is dead but keeps hoping against hope because otherwise he would not have the strength to live. 

I picked up my cell-phone, punched number four and gave it to her. Then I just stood there and watched as she and Yasmine laughed, cried and spoke Arabic at racer speed while I, and several passers-by who got caught up in the maelstrom of happiness, watched them with tears in our eyes. We humans are suckers for happy ends and this obviously was happy happy not the end or the beginning of the end but the beginning of the rest of something with a lot of love in it.

Sarah was red, too, a red like the curtains in an old theatre except not dusty. I could understand that she and Yussef could make beautiful chords together. Yasmine was more yellow, but she was still young. Sound of cats making small pleased sounds but not purring.

They slept in my room, in the bed. I slept in the fake leather couch. This was acceptable because Yussef had said I was his brother and thus family. This made me very proud, and very happy. I never had a brother before. I squared things with the hotel and we got an extra bed instead of the couch. Yasmine made friends with Hilda and I taught her Smells Like Teen Spirit. 

Magda

Yussef was bouncing up and down, something I'd never seen this grounded man do. The paperwork and bureaucracy had been horrendous, but finally Sarah and Yasmine had been allowed to fly to Sweden. Now they only had to get through the border control. There oughtn't to be a problem, but we had waited for a long time now since their plane had landed. Peter was with them and had promised never to let them out of sight, but dealing with officials was not what he did best. 

At last Yussef let out a big roar. Two different-sized females were running towards us. But where was Peter? The ecstatic joy and vast love going on beside me was all very well and would usually have me reduced to a blubbering heap, but where the hell was he? The minutes slowly dragged by and now the others began to notice.

"Sarah say he go bag. Say she go me." Yussef said.

"Ok, I'm sure he's fine. He'll be here any minute." And sure I was sure he was fine. Fine. I worried anyway. 

Eventually he came, of course. But he was quite obviously not fine. He walked very slowly, bag in tow, all pale. I rushed to him and gave him the biggest but softest hug I could. We found a place to sit and he held on to me like I was his nest now and I suppose I was.

"It was so terrible," he whispered. "Cold clammy like old porridge glue with no air or dry hot dusty papers with no air. I could not leave them and I didn't. I think I'm proud again but now I'm so tired. I don't want to be here but I don't know if I can walk. Is it far?"

"Not too bad. I borrowed dad's car, I can bring it to the entrance if you want."

"No, you must not leave me. I can walk if I must."

Yussef picked him up. "I carry you, brother." he said. "You carry family, I carry you." And he did, through great halls and subterranean passages. Peter's eyelids grew heavier and when we reached the car he slept. He slept all the way back home and he slept back some of his strength. The backseat of the car hummed with love and softly spoken Arabic. 

My love for Peter, palely sleeping beside with all his fragile strength, was humming along too. Once again he had stepped up and done what had to be done and paid the price. At last we were home and David came out and they did their joy-thing again and we staggered off to the nest and slept the sleep of the just and the just about just.

Peter

It was fantastic to get back home and to be with Magda again. The bureaucracy had been mindlessly murderous, much worse that getting beat up - which I didn't even remember. Without that helpful lady from the Red Cross we would have been lost, chewed to pulp and recycled as new forms. It was worth it, however. Yussef had his family back and I had come to really like Sarah and love Yasmine. 

Magda and Yussef had been talking about him getting Magda's flat and her moving in with me. She seemed nervous about my reaction, but how could I be anything but delighted? We were getting married, after all. Everything was fun with her, we both loved small silly games and competitions. You know, like who-can-make-his-pizza-look-most-like-Ireland-without-consulting-a-map competitions. Everyday stuff, but so precious.

We had decided to get married on Valentine's Day. That seemed fitting and normal to me and Magda didn't mind. In a way I wanted a great big humungous wedding, in more than one way I didn't. One difficulty in arranging a large wedding was that I had almost no one to invite. The only person I could ask who Magda didn't know too was Ola. I wasn't even sure that his therapist code would allow him to come. Maybe, since we were in the process of ending our professional relation. The last few times we'd met we talked mainly about our separation. It was scary but, to quote Ola, life is more important than therapy.

I went into the bad flat by myself. I had to confront it on my own. I sat down, took a deep breath and looked the floor right in its eyes. Nothing there. Whatever had been there (whether that whatever lived in the floor or in my mind) was gone. The floor was still ugly, still smelled (to me) like old wet cigarette butts, but the ugliness was powerless now. 




Mate Ch. 04



Not a church wedding. Magda had left The Church of Sweden and we were not very religious. In that we were kind of typical, Sweden is the least religious country in the world. Or so I've been told, but a lot of the facts you know always turn out to not be facts at all. So, a civil ceremony followed by a great big party. 

There were many possibilities for theme weddings. Divers wedding, climbers wedding, bowling wedding, Elvis wedding, Abba wedding, castle wedding, zombie wedding in an old mine, zoo wedding with the animals of your choice, boxing wedding, downhill skiing wedding, naked and rolling in paint wedding, building a snow-house dressed only in leaves wedding or pig out on all the shrimps you can eat wedding. And so on. 

Yussef offered to organize a Syrian wedding, which was more tempting than the bowling option, but less so than the nude paint deal. Eventually we decided to have faith in the weather and hold the ceremony outdoors, by Jimmy Pond's pond. 

Jimmy is quite crazy, but it's not a bad crazy. He lives by a pond not far from town and never leaves it. He's the closest thing we've got to a shaman round here and I have always found him very soothing. It's good to meet someone who is way crazier than me but perfectly happy. Gives me hope. He is human nature, a human who is part of nature, and just as indifferent to approval. He just is.

Magda

That Jimmy fellow had promised us good weather for the wedding. He delivered, too. The night was clear and cold and the sky was full of stars. Our friends were standing round the pond with torches lifted high. The pond watched us, the stars, and the torches with its large unblinking black eye. The wedding officiant was standing at the center of the pond, waiting for us. We watched the scene, through binoculars kindly lent to us by my darling nieces. Peter tasted the chords. "Perfect!"

We made our entrance, bells jingling, in our one horse open sleigh. Friends and torches formed a path for us to where the officiant waited. His part of the ceremony was rather mundane and lasted no longer than two minutes, but when he was done we were legally married, rings exchanged, lips kissed. The officiant stepped back and Jimmy emerged from the darkness, looking like a mix of an old mattress and a bird's nest.

"The pond is pleased." he said. "The pond is pleased because your hearts are pure, and your love warms not only yourself, but other people too. The pond wants you to drink it and it will not make you sick. The pond wants you to drink it and be a part of it as it will be a part of you."

He handed us an old cracked cup with murkish water. We drank. He walked round the edge of the pod inviting our guests to drink. Most did.

This rag-tag algae soup communion was somehow very moving. By marrying Peter I became a part of something bigger than myself, which I think we humans have a deep need to. In accepting communion with the pond as an aspect of Mother Nature or something I reaffirmed my being a part of what I was and always would be a part of and who sounds like the bad fantasy novel now? Well, anyway, it got to me and I am sure you would have been moved too, had you been there.

Afterwards we went to a place we had rented, not all that far from the pond but too far for Jimmy, who stayed. We ate a lot. Dad made a speech. Peter was happy that Ola had come and happy with the chords in general. Yussef had learnt a short speech in Swedish that had us both crying. Then I had a surprise as some curtains were pulled back revealing music equipment. Peter, Erik and Bettan had been practicing in secret and now played some of my very favorite songs. Yasmine made a surprise appearance on the Nirvana tune. She, Greta and Emma made friends in spite of the age gap and played all night, when they didn't all squeeze onto Peter's lap. I must make that man a father as soon as possible. He is born to be a dad. 

Peter

The wedding, the party, coming home as married - all perfect. We didn't wat to spend thee night in a hotel, why should we? Instead we lit 82 log white candles - one for every day we had known each other - in the plant room and had fantastic we-are-married-sex. Magda solemnly ditched her contraceptives which gave the whole thing an extra edge. Rough and tender at the same time.

Well. I guess that's it. If it had been just a story all threads would be neatly wrapped up by now. They aren't quite, Roger got off too easy, for instance. But that's life for you, as oppose to stories.

One final word of advice, people: Do things that you will be proud of! When I finally did it changed my miserable life into something wonderful.

Now I'll go with my favorite ending and claim that we lived happily ever after. I suppose it's really too early to tell since it's only been a week since the wedding. But if that week is an indicator happy ever after seems probable. Bye bye!