Shadow Read Online Free Page B

could gaze out over the audience.
    ‘But when the deed was done and the evening came, she was no longer sure. Like a lost soul the anxiety appeared and made camp by the same fire. No matter whether your action is evil or good, it spreads like rings on the water. Over vast expanses it will travel, finding ever new paths. That is why your influence is infinite, and also your guilt.’
    The lecture was over. He slowly closed the book. The lights were turned up. When his voice faded away, all was quiet, and in the interval that followed, the fear managed to creep in. The ever-present horror that this time it would happen. The audience would rise as one body and with a deafening roar scream out their disappointment. At his incompetence. His mediocrity.
    The sense of relief when the applause came, the kick that pulsed through his veins. The sound of all the enthusiastic hands surrounding him like a loving embrace.
    He was fantastic! Everyone admired him.
    And then the longing for the relaxation that only the minibar in his hotel room could provide.
    He gave her a long look before he left the stage. Come to my dressing-room afterwards.
       
    There were three messages on his answer machine. The first was from his daughter Ellen. He knew that he’d forgotten to ring as he had promised. The second from his wife Louise, who sounded angry because he’d forgotten to ring Ellen.And then the third, from a Marianne Folkesson who wanted to speak to him regarding Gerda Persson. The housekeeper from his childhood who was always there. It was years since he’d had any contact with her, but the Ragnerfeldt Corporation was still paying out a sum of money to her each month, a sort of pension after long and faithful service – on direct orders from his father. He jotted down Marianne Folkesson’s number and was just about to punch in the numbers to his daughter’s mobile.
    A discreet knock at the door.
    He flipped shut the phone and opened the door.
    All those prize-winning words were finally superfluous. In the arena that remained he was the one who was the star.
    He would not have to suffer through the night alone.

4
    E xcellent.
    The word was the first to cross her mind when she woke up and opened her eyes; she couldn’t for the life of her understand why. If the word had been exhausted , or corrode or some other unpleasant-sounding one she would have been less surprised, but it had been excellent , and that was a word she had not felt the occasion to use in a long time.
    Louise Ragnerfeldt sat at the kitchen table eating breakfast and listening to the sound of her daughter getting ready for school.
    At close range, gradual change looked like a standstill. Only with the sharpness of distance did the successive disintegration become clear. Because that’s what it was, a disintegration; there was no closing her eyes to it any longer.
    Time passes. It was probably all right. Could be worse. But this assessment no longer applied. Not when she was about to turn forty-three, half her life already spent and now fully aware of how fast it had gone. Her twelve-year-old daughter was living proof of how fast the rest would go. So the word ‘excellent’ was needed regularly, but in order for the word to apply it had to come from the heart.
    She sighed when once again she got his voicemail and hung up without leaving a message. Sometimes she would imagine it was her father-in-law she heard on the other end; their voices had become so similar. Every time she was appalled. It reminded her that her husband was as much a stranger to her as her father-in-law was, and would alwaysremain. Maybe it had been partly her own fault that she never got to know him before the stroke. If so, it had not been intentional. She could normally talk with anyone, but had shrivelled in Axel Ragnerfeldt’s presence and become silent and dull. She had chosen her words so carefully that in the end none of them was worth saying. On the occasions when she mustered her