Free Sail of Stone by Åke Edwardson

couple looked around. The man said something and he heard what he said this time, and he recognized the language. He carried remains of it inside himself. He didn’t think about it anymore, but he heard the words and could still put them together if he had to.
    He wouldn’t have to.
    He ordered another glass from the woman, who couldn’t see him. He drank with his back to the couple, who sat by the window and looked out over the viaducts and the sea.
    Frans hadn’t been the first.
    In the currents, the bodies embraced each other.
    Jesus. Jesus!
    When he came out he passed a truck filled with fish. He knew where it came from and where it was going. The truck raced down, on its way west. He smelled the odor of fish through the diesel fumes, or he thought he did. Naturally he only thought so.
    The truck disappeared down into the tunnel, a danger for anyone coming the opposite direction. He waited for the crash but didn’t hear anything, not this time. He only heard the familiar roar as the motor forced itself up the hills on the other side.
    He would never go there again. Never again!
    He walked east. He had a meeting.

9
    A neta Djanali made breakfast with her bad dreams winding around in her head like a lingering fog. She put water in the kettle but forgot to turn on the power and waited in vain, standing at the kitchen counter, until she realized what had happened and looked around to see if anyone was standing there smirking.
    No one was standing there.
    Sometimes she missed having someone there to let out an indulgent laugh at her absentmindedness. Who was always there. Sometimes Fredrik was there, and there was nothing wrong with his indulgent laugh, but he wasn’t always there.
    And she wasn’t always in his kitchen, at his counter.
    Was this what being a live-apart couple was?
    No. That presupposed a relationship that could be called a relationship, something accepted and … and, well, confirmed, established.
    Something obvious. For both people. They weren’t there, she and Fredrik. Why weren’t they there? Or were they on their way there without needing to confirm it, or even think about it?
    Life is complicated.
    She toasted two pieces of bread at the same time. It was more complicated than toasting one slice, but compared to other parts of her life it wasn’t particularly complicated. She spread butter on the bread, sliced some cheese, spooned some blackberry marmalade on the cheese. Simple, easy actions, like brewing tea: milk in the bottom of the mug, pour in the tea, two sugar cubes, stir, let cool.
    Drink the tea. Eat the bread.
    Empty the brain.
    For fifteen minutes.
    The moon was still up when she came outside, but it was lingering, pale, behind thin clouds, like in a fog. Her car was in shadow from the sun,which shone happily in another part of the sky. The car was cold when she got in, the scent of night still in the leather. Everything from the night was lingering this morning. That’s what she thought.
    She drove south. There was a line of cars at Linnéplatsen. Three lanes, keeping time. Some idiot kept revving the engine, stared at her, revved it again, staring from his Audi.
    Should she throw open her door and show her ID?
    The light turned green and the idiot flew away, on his way to Le Mans, the Nürburgring, made it seven yards, swerved to the left, accelerated, on his way to a late start in Monte Carlo, roared past a few asphalt mixers and the road worker farthest out lost his cap in the rush of wind.
    Aneta lifted the phone and called the officer at dispatch and gave him the disappearing license plate number on the car up ahead.
    No goal today for Audi.
    She had seen the flash of racism in his eyes.
    You soon became sensitive to such things. A sunburn from Africa always caused reactions, no matter the year, decade, century, millennium. You know, of course, that all humans have their origins in Africa? she said once when Fredrik was playing racist. Yes, playing. That was at first; then he