35

      It’s too hot to talk in the sauna. Gold-coloured light is shining on their naked bodies and the pale sandalwood. It’s 97 degrees now and the air burns Reidar Frost’s lungs when he breathes in. Drops of sweat are falling from his nose onto the white hair on his chest.

      The Japanese journalist, Mizuho, is sitting on the bench next to Veronica. Their bodies are both flushed and shiny. Sweat is running between their breasts, over their stomachs and down into their pubic hair.

      Mizuho is looking seriously at Reidar. She has come all the way from Tokyo to interview him. He told her good-naturedly that he never gives interviews, but that she was very welcome to attend the party. She was probably hoping he would say something about the Sanctum series being turned into a manga film. She has been here four days now.

      Veronica sighs and closes her eyes for a while.

      Mizuho didn’t take off her gold necklace before entering the sauna, and Reidar can see that it’s starting to burn. Marie only lasted five minutes before she went off to the shower, and now the Japanese journalist leaves the sauna as well.

      Veronica leans forward and rests her elbows on her knees, breathing through her half-open mouth as sweat drips from her nipples.

      Reidar feels a sort of brittle tenderness towards her. But he doesn’t know how to explain the desolate landscape inside him, and that everything he does now, everything he throws himself into, is just random fumbling for something to help him survive the next minute.

      ‘Marie’s very beautiful,’ Veronica says.

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Big breasts.’

      ‘Stop it,’ Reidar mutters.

      She looks at him with a serious expression as she goes on:

      ‘Why can’t I just get a divorce …?’

      ‘Because that would be the end for us,’ Reidar says.

      Veronica’s eyes fill with tears and she is about to say something else when Marie comes back in and sits down next to Reidar with a little giggle.

      ‘God, it’s hot,’ she gasps. ‘How can you sit here?’

      Veronica throws a scoop of water onto the stones. There’s a loud hiss and hot clouds of steam rise up and surround them for a few seconds. Then the heat becomes dry and static again.

      Reidar is hanging forward over his knees. The hair on his head is so hot he almost scalds himself when he runs his hand through it.

      ‘No, that’s enough,’ he gasps, and climbs down.

      The two women follow him out into the soft snow. Dusk is spreading its darkness across the snow, which is already glowing pale blue.

      Heavy snowflakes drift down as the three naked people pound through the deep snow.

      David, Wille and Berzelius are eating dinner with the other members of the Sanctum scholarship committee, and the drinking songs can be heard all the way out to the back of the garden.

      Reidar turns and looks at Veronica and Marie. Steam is rising from their flushed bodies, they’re enveloped in veils of mist as the snow falls around them. He is about to say something when Veronica bends over and throws an armful of snow up at him. He backs away, laughing, and falls onto his back, vanishing under the loose snow.

      He lies there on his back, listening to their laughter.

      The snow feels liberating. His body is still scorching hot. Reidar looks straight up at the sky, the hypnotic snow falling from the centre of creation, an eternity of drifting white.

      A memory takes him by surprise. He is peeling off the children’s snowsuits. Taking off hats with snow caught in the wool. He can remember their cold cheeks and sweaty hair. The smell of the drying cupboard and wet boots.

      He misses the children so much that his longing feels purely physical in its intensity.

      Right now he wishes he was alone, so he could lie in the snow until he lost consciousness. Die, surrounded by his memories of Felicia and Mikael. Of how they had once been his.

      He gets to his feet with an effort and gazes out across the white fields. Marie and Veronica are laughing, making angels in the snow and rolling around a short distance away.

      ‘How long have these parties been going on?’ Marie calls to him.

      ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Reidar mumbles.

      He is about to walk off, drink until he’s drunk, then tie a noose round his neck, but Marie is standing in front of him, legs akimbo.

      ‘You never want to talk. I don’t know anything,’ she says with a laugh. ‘I don’t even know if you’ve got children, or—’

      ‘Just leave me the fuck alone!’ Reidar shouts, and pushes past. ‘What is it you want?’

      ‘Sorry, I …’

      ‘Leave me the fuck alone,’ he snaps, and disappears into the house.

      The two women walk shivering back into the sauna. The steam on their bodies runs off as the heat closes round them again, as if it had never been gone.

      ‘What’s his problem?’ Marie asks.

      ‘He’s pretending to be alive, but feels dead,’ Veronica replies simply.