The Beast Read Online Free PDF Page B

middle-aged. Sixteen years is a long time in the life of guitar
solos and film dialogue; they age and fade away and get replaced.
        She
was lying on her stomach, her face turned towards him. He caressed her cheek,
planted a light kiss on a buttock. He liked her very much. Was he in love? He
couldn't bear the effort of working it out. He liked that she was there, next
to him, that she agreed to share his hours, for he detested being lonely, it
was pointless, like suffocating; surely solitude was a kind of death. He moved
his hand from her cheek to stroke her back. She stirred. Why did she lie there,
next to an older man with a child, a man who wasn't that good-looking, not ugly
but certainly not handsome, and not well off, and, arguably, not even fun to be
with? Why had she chosen to spend her nights with him, she who was so
beautiful, so young and had so many more hours left to live? He kissed her
again, this time on her hip.
        'Are
you still awake?'
        'I'm
sorry. Did I wake you?'
        'I
don't know. What about you, haven't you been asleep?'
        'You
know what I'm like.'
        She
pulled him close, her naked body against his, sleepily warm, awake but not
quite.
        'You
must sleep, my old darling.' 'Old?'
        'You
can't cope if you don't sleep. You know that. Come on. Sleep.'
        She
looked at him, kissed him, held him.
        'I
was thinking about Frans.'
        'Fredrik,
not now.'
        'I do
think about him. I want to think about him, I'm listening to Marie next door
and I'm thinking about how Frans too was a child when he was beaten, when he
watched me being beaten. When he caught the train to Stockholm.'
        'Close
your eyes.'
        'Why
should anyone beat a child?'
        'If
you keep your eyes closed for long enough you go to sleep. That's how it
works.'
        'Why
should anyone beat a child, who will grow up and learn to understand and judge
the person who's been beating it? At least, judge the rights and wrongs of that
beaten child.'
        She
pushed at him to turn him on his side with his back towards her, then moved in
close behind him, twisting into him until they were like two boughs of a tree.
        'Why
keep hitting a child, who will construe the beatings as Daddy's duty and look
to its own failings for the reason. I'm not good enough, not tough enough. The
child will tell itself that it's his or her own fault, partly at least. Christ
almighty, I was into that kind of crap myself. I forced myself to believe it,
not to feel violated and abandoned.'
        Micaela
slept. Her breathing was slow and regular against the back of his neck, so
close that the skin became damp. Through the window came the sounds of another
bus. It stopped outside, reversed, stopped again, reversed. Perhaps the same
one as yesterday, a large coach.
    ----
        

        
        Lennart
Oscarsson carried a secret. He wasn't alone in this, but felt as if he were.
The pain of it rode him, curled up on his right shoulder, slept inside his
chest, occupied all the space inside his stomach. Every evening he decided to
let it out the following morning. Once he had set it free, he could sit back
quietly, contemplating days without a secret for company stretching out ahead.
        He
didn't have the strength, couldn't do it. He was screaming, but nobody
listened. Maybe to scream properly you actually had to open your mouth?
        He
did the same things every morning. Sat in the kitchen at their round pine
table, spooning yoghurt into his face. Karin was always there at his side. She
was his life, this beautiful woman, whom he had loved beyond reason ever since
he'd met her for the first time, sixteen years ago. She drank her usual coffee
with hot milk, ate rye bread and butter, read the arts pages in the morning
paper.
        Now.
Now!
        He
should tell her now. Then it would have been said. She had every right to know.
Others didn't, but she did. It was