The Viper Read Online Free PDF

she? Did she have no solid foundation?
    “Am I not allowed to have any hopes, am I not permitted to wish for something better?” she said trying to defend herself. Who am I after all, sitting here on the sofa in front of the TV, nurturing some ridiculous dream, instead of sitting on a train halfway to Bergen with that Kosta Boda vase packed in my bag and the car sold? Who the hell am I?
    She got up from the sofa, went over to Arvid’s study and roused the computer from sleep mode by giving the mouse a push. Once the screen had faded up she opened Flight Tracker where she had already typed in Arvid’s flight number. It was true what the red-haired lady on the TV screen had announced. Three-hour delay. He wouldn’t be back in Visby until four at the earliest, later if the connecting flights from Stockholm were fully booked.

 
    5.
    The floor creaked beneath Anders Traneus as he stepped out onto the glass veranda. He didn’t want to blame her, but his thoughts were going around in circles and with every lap they came back to the same place. To her. Kristina. That she really couldn’t be trusted. Then he quickly stumbled on again. It was difficult to accuse someone you loved.
    But he blamed himself more than anyone. He had shoved his head inside a hornet’s nest for the second time. How stupid could he be? And then, inevitably, that’s where he ended up: Was it stupidity or would he have done it anyway, even if he’d known how things would turn out?
    Forty-seven years old. Life tapered off. Sometimes he thought he was still young. He felt young. His body was strong, showed no signs of the onset of old age, and over the last few years, he had to admit, his rather restricted life had opened up and become more filled with happiness. When he thought about how this happiness would soon be taken away from him, he felt that life did not offer much room for maneuver anymore. It was no longer very easy to change directions and start afresh. It was at moments like this that he really felt ancient.
    On the other hand, he hadn’t been very good at starting afresh back when he was eighteen, either. How long can someone who cast you off continue to haunt you?
    Far too long.
    Was that how it would end this time: a Monday at the beginning of October, while he, paralyzed, stared out uselessly across the gray-brown stubble field from the glass veranda he’d built himself.
    The sun hung low in the sky and the light shone straight toward him. He saw that the entire field was covered in delicate webs of gossamer. An entire field. An unbelievable effort.
    Paralyzed? Well, what was he supposed to do? Take her by force? He wasn’t like that, that was more Arvid’s style. Maybe that was how she wanted it. Maybe there was something wrong in her head that made her choose the one who treated her the worst? Or was that what a real man was to her: strong, ruthless?
    He tried to suppress those thoughts. Idiotic reasoning. Bitterness.
    He opened a window, brushed away a few dead flies from the sill with the back of his hand. The monotonous humming of the fan from Hedberg’s feed silo was clearly audible today. The air stood still, as stuffy outside as it was inside.
    When Inger left him he had become bitter. He had dwelled on it for a number of years. To think of all the things he had done for her. Even the glass veranda—it had been her idea, but he was the one who had built it. For her. It may not have gone so well with the rest of the house—it looked more like a modern birdhouse that had been stuck onto the big house from the twenties, but it was solidly built.
    Then eventually it had lifted. Now he had to admit that she was right. She had been right to leave him. He had been fond of Inger, but hadn’t been ready for her. He hadn’t been able to get Kristina out of his mind, even though she had been unfaithful, even though she had jilted him. Inger never stood a chance against the memory of Kristina. And yet … for most of her adult