The Weeping Girl by Håkan Nesser Read Free Book Online

so steady, despite everything.
    He looked up at her again. Licked his lips with the tip of his tongue.
    ‘Who are you?’
    The words sounded as insubstantial as the creature who had uttered them. She put her rucksack on the floor and sat down in the other armchair. Waited for a few moments while continuing to look
him in the eye, and decided that he didn’t actually look all that old. About forty-five, she thought. Her mother was forty-three, so that could be about right.
    ‘My name’s Mikaela. You’re my dad.’
    He made no reply. Didn’t react at all.
    ‘I’m your daughter,’ she added.
    ‘My daughter? Mikaela?’
    He seemed to shrivel up even more, and the words were so faint that she could hardly make them out. The book fell to the floor, but he made no attempt to pick it up. His hands were shaking
slightly.
    Don’t start crying, she thought. Please, Dad, don’t start crying.
    Looking back, she found it hard to say how long they had sat there in silence, opposite each other. Perhaps it was only half a minute, perhaps it was ten. It was all so odd,
every second seemed both static and gigantic, and when quite a few of them had passed she slowly began to realize something she hadn’t grasped before – nor even thought about . . .
Something about language and silence. And perceptions.
    It wasn’t at all clear, but for the first time in her life she suddenly noticed that it was possible to experience things without talking about them. Experience things together with
somebody else, without putting anything into words, not even for herself. Neither while things were actually happening, nor later . . . That words, those unwieldy words, could never be one hundred
per cent accurate, and that it was sometimes necessary to desist from using them. Not to let them trample all over experiences, and distort them.
    Just to sit there in silence and experience things. To let everything be exactly what it was. Anyway, something along those lines is what she became aware of. Discovered during her first meeting
with her dad. Her bird dad.
    During half a minute. Or maybe ten.
    Then he stood up, walked over to the bureau next to his bed and opened the bottom drawer.
    ‘I’ve written to you,’ he said. ‘It’s good that you’ve come to collect it.’
    He produced a bundle of letters. It was at least six inches thick, and tied up by a length of black tape the shape of a cross on the top surface.
    ‘It’ll be best if you throw them away. But as you’re here, you might as well have them.’
    He put the bundle down on the table between them, and sat down again.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But you shouldn’t have come. I think it would be best if you left now.’
    He blinked a few times, and jerked his head from side to side. He was no longer looking at her, and she assumed he felt uncomfortable. That he thought it was awkward to be sitting here with his
daughter who had just materialized out of nowhere.
    ‘I want to get to know you and talk to you,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know who you were until yesterday. I want to know why that has been the case.’
    ‘It’s all my fault,’ he said. ‘I did something terrible, and it’s right that things have turned out as they have. There’s nothing to be done about it.
It’s not possible.’
    He jerked his head from side to side again.
    ‘I don’t understand,’ said Mikaela. ‘I need to know in order to understand.’
    ‘It’s not possible,’ he repeated.
    Then he sat there in silence, staring down at the table. Leaned forward, clutching the arms of his chair. More time passed.
    ‘You have another dad now. It’s best the way things are. Go now.’
    She could feel the sobs welling up in her throat.
    Look at me, she thought. Touch me! Say that you are my dad, and that you’re pleased that I’ve come to see you at last!
    But he just sat there. The remarkable silence had gone – or was changed – and now, all of a sudden, there was merely repugnance and